Lou Neuburger is a born and bred Londoner who writes poetry and prose.  She grew up in Hackney, which informs her writing.

Lou works as a teacher and lives in Walthamstow with her family.  She is currently completing her MA in Creative and Life Writing.

Email:  louisa.neuburger@gmail.com

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KERRY, BELFAST

She talks casually about her smack habit
and being thrown down the stairs
by her (current) boyfriend, drunk at midnight.
Rolls another fat cigarette,
tucks her hair behind her ear
and sparks up using a yellow plastic lighter.

One of the Belfast people,
she points out the restored grandeur of the pub:
the painted glass and wooden booths,
the special strips for lighting matches
which read MATCHES in capital letters.

Three pints in, beer-bold
she demands to know my age and where I live
whether I have a boyfriend/ kids
how old and how many.

Clean for five years, she has a riverside flat,
floor-to-ceiling windows:
You should see the sunsets, crimson and yellow–
right there in her head.
Her face has that hard, flat look:
too tired for too long.

At half past ten she has to leave
to meet her boyfriend in Bangor.
Downs her whisky,
says good night
and she’s gone.

_____

PASTORAL

THOSE WITH THE MARK WILL GO TO HELL
WHERE THE FIRE NEVER QUENCH
AND THE WORMS NEVER DIE
according to the homemade cardboard sign
tied to the street preacher’s shopping trolley
as he takes a break outside Jollof House
and who we all ignore. At Dalston Lane
the traffic lights are hooded like prisoners
awaiting torture and the glossy photos
at Stirling Ackroyd show two-bed flats
here go for half-a-million.
I stop at the ATM to get real cash money
and shake my head at the white-faced girl
who asks for change, then grin in shame and horror.

Magnolia is coming into flower
at number 14 where Jamie lived
and where we played football between the front door
and the gate with Davinder from number 12
or was it 16, I can’t remember.

The sky is turning red above the Shard
down in the City, a million miles away.

Even the moleman’s tumbledown house
is being done up.

I smell spring coming.

_____ 

ROZZY

More powerful than Cleopatra
More presence than the Mona Lisa
More knowledge than Wikipedia
More swing than Duke Ellington’s Orchestra

Better-read than Michel de Montaigne
Better fed than Auguste Escoffier
Better gags than Groucho Marx
More electric than colliding quarks

More incisive than a surgeon’s scalpel
More original than Picasso’s pencil
More dialectics than Marx and Hegel
More nourishing than a Brick-Lane bagel

Better dressed than Lauren Bacall
Brighter colours than the Sainte Chapelle
More courageous than Muhammad Ali
Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.