The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Victor Tapner

Kalashnikov

I am promiscuous and unashamed.
My lovers take me to cool rooms
where I’m stroked by many hands.
I live secretly in the suburbs,
pampered and spared ordinary chores.
My lovers trust me not to let them down.

I sleep in strange places: on floors
of what were once apartment blocks;
amid rubble on the street
cradled in rough arms waiting for daybreak.
I’ve lain with the corpse of a boy
in the back of a burnt-out truck.

The touch of sweat is all my lovers leave.
At night they are led to empty cellars
where they give their bodies to pain.
I’ve seen them kneel in narrow alleys
murmuring, as though at prayer.
Such yearnings even I can’t satisfy.

One afternoon, on a hillside
I was brought to a fresh grave in the rain.
People were mourning a name
I’d hardly known: a one-night stand.
It’s at such times I laugh. Head raised,
I cackle at the heavens. I feel no loss.