Gary Allen is from Ballymena, Northern Ireland. He trained as a mechanical engineer, then travelled and worked in Europe, settling for some years in Amsterdam. Now he's back in Ballymena. In 2002 he published his first full-length book of poems, ‘Languages’ (Flambard/ Black Mountain Press), followed by ‘Exile’ (Black Mountain Press, 2004); ‘North of Nowhere’ (Lagan Press, 2006); ‘Iscariot’s Dream’ (Agenda Editions, 2008); ‘The Bone House’ (Lagan Press, 2008); ‘The Next Room’ (Lapwing Publications, 2010); and, ‘Ha, Ha’ (Lagan Press, 2011). |
Bridges
by Gary Allen
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Jesus clocks-in.
Jesus came to labour with us, that must have been in the late seventies when the bombing thing was getting into its stride and walking to work was full of anxieties – it was almost a relief to clock-on. He was different, in a freaky kind of way named by the older workers because of his beard and long hair he talked about London as though he had lived there all his life about Marx and Brecht and the Rights of Man smoked roll-ups, which was suspicious then and told us about the time hitching in Lebanon the guard at the border-post stroked his blond hair and wanted a blow-job which made the older men nod and wink: he got on well with everyone it was hard to guess his religion only that he hated the USA and listened to bands we never heard of yet squats and communes were foreign concepts to us might as well have been Ohio or Vietnam: Why do you throw stones and petrol bombs? he asked, For fun, we shrugged, grinning sheepishly as though caught on a border between what has always been for us, and what is new. © Gary Allen From "Bridges" To order, please select the button according to where you want us to send your book(s)
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