Remembrance Sunday

The commentator said
the queue for the march
past would’ve stretched
all the way from London
to Edinburgh, had they
not all been lost. At eleven
I went out to hear the guns,
unrolling the sleeves of my
jumper to smoke a quiet
cigarette. That evening, I
sat and watched the news,
the proud-coated men and
women marching by again,
resting their red rings on
repeat. On an envelope I
wrote Who am I to say we’
ve learned so little, to say
I can’t relate to the past?

James Bruce May read Creative Writing at Greenwich University and Goldsmiths College in London. His work has appeared in HARK Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Stockholm Review of Literature, The Fat City Review, The Puffin Review, The treacle Well and others.