Smoking a spliff with the Russian aristocracy

 Our breathwork 

            similar, perhaps, as dead

                         
                                    skin cells and tendency
 to orgasm                                               
                                                                          
                                 prematurely, you amateur 

                                                     anthropologist, hope for this 
                                                                   same-ness

                                            Before puffing & passing the lit 
        ribbons of scar tissue 
                        to a new place, 
                                             we hadn’t noticed We’d been
                                                    
focused 
                                               on the small cuts
                    the insides
               of our lips,
                         Too much to 
                understand
                             what  
                                 was  Residue 

          from expired fireworks 
              camouflaged into our fog

                                               Tapping our host 
                                 vices      into an overflow-
                                               ash tray
                                     
                                at the centre 
                                                   of our cheekbone deep communion 
                                                              The city

                                   is made from this       
                                                                 flesh-London,
                                                       Moscow, wherever
                    the house roofs  
                        torn up to the neck 
                                of hard shaven men     
      and their daughters 
                                               talk in       fake-posh 
                         accents 
  to strangers.
                                                        Sorry Dad

Shannon Smith-Meekings is an East London born Jamaican and English poet, who graduated from Goldsmiths University in 2022. Her first published work appears in the 2023 spring edition of the Poetry Review followed by the Autumn 2024 issue and the 15th issue of Propel Magazine.