Taking Y Mari Lwyd to 10 Downing Street

The bleached horse’s skull is secure
on its pole. Let’s not be tempted to adorn
eye sockets with glass or gems, leave
them bare, blind as the shark when it bites.

Drop the sacking over yourself, take
the pole as if a lance and ride out.
Rein in any want to follow the routes
of water pipes to Liverpool or Birmingham;
your grievance is not with them.
Go to the source of your anger.

Flout tradition, fuck off the poetry –
it’s not as if we want to cross that threshold.
Tamp that pole ‘til the hanging mandible
clack, clack, clacks. Bash the skull
against that dark, keyless door and screech
for release, for controlling the taps
of our own bounty.

Sleeping Dragons

It’s true when they tell you there are dragons
asleep in Wales. Not so fantastical to see them;
haunting the Tesco meat aisle perhaps, a basket
tucked under one saggy wing and dragging a tail
which threatens only the yellow cone that warns
of a wet floor.

Or you are behind one at the polling station
waiting to scratch their x into the box, careful
not to tear the paper, you may get close enough –
tail allowing – to hear the rumbled snore.

Even those that in their dreams
remember flight and flame appear
to have lost their head for heights,
their bellies warmed by gratitude.

Brett Evans lives, writes, and drinks in his native North Wales. He is co-founder and co-editor at the poetry and prose journal Prole. His two poetry pamphlets, The Devil’s Tattoo (2015) and Sloth and the Art of Self-deprecation (2018) are both published by Indigo Dreams. Brett considers life is enhanced by good music, good friendship, and dogs (friendship doesn’t get better than that).