Cry Me A Canal
Context: no
written by: Jean Akintoye
I once kept a barge on the tears I beckoned from you.
There were just enough of them
for the council to charge a mooring fee,
and the wreckage below was exactly what I needed to stay afloat.
It wasn’t much, hardly enough room to swing a cat
(or swing, full stop),
and it got awfully cold whenever I forgot to yank up the floorboards,
bend and crack them into shape and carve a campfire
from the flesh we’d made –
And sometimes the severed arm of a shopping trolley
or the guts of another, long-sunken barge
would contort like idle sinew
and creak their way to the surface.
They’d peer from beneath the wash.
Come and have a swim!They’d say;
The water’s fine.
And now that your tears have run dry
my barge has capsized on nothing
and sunk into the torrid mud
the hull subsumed in jaws of cold iron, half-dead.
Cry me a canal
so I can sail off your sorrow
again.
- Cry Me A Canal - February 21, 2026
- “Last Train” - November 20, 2025
