DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
After Work
Adam Warne
I come home to your house in a body mine again the sun is sloppy below the blushing clouds and the sky is flushed on the mat I peel shoes from my dull flint feet and as I lumber on your tiles I leave silhouettes of sweat like moon or fish glinting on the tide and on the side the kettle throbs with seething water and two teabags wait in two green mugs far away across the sea Robert Frost wrote home is something you somehow haven’t to deserve which is much easier to write when your grandfather has bought you a farm the fields are full of turnips and corn the sky is soft with birds in the land of plenty I labour in the dark and harvest discarded popcorn for a pittance in a uniform which will remain until the final wheeze of time the property of the company my palms are blistered I could sleep like a mouse on a ball of cotton wool for a million years tomorrow is another day at work
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
by Rosie Jackson
ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east


