Convocation of the unseen

Human trafficking to UK is rising

The Guardian, 18 October 2012

Two scenes into the screening he gets it already

this isn’t the kind of picture he likes to give up

his free time to. There are no chase sequences,

no shoot-em-ups, passionate couplings or partings.

In place of depictions of a decadent idealistic

western lifestyle (that after all he’s been through

is the myth he aspires to) a documentary charting

Bristol’s wax and wane as an axis for slavery.

A shilling on the guinea for livestock from Africa

or cotton from the colonies, it pays to diversify,

the overseer notching up pickings on a ledger

of leathery sun-blackened hide. He empathizes

more with the slaver than the negro slacker,

our deluded movie theatre dreamer who craves

inclusion more than liberty, a lighter skin-shade

for upward mobility, the same shoes and tie

as the neighbours. Like in the Truman Show.

After the titles the lights come up and everyone

makes for the shadows they came from, the men

the women, Romanians, Chinese, Slovaks, Nigerians,

Vietnamese, indentured workers who don’t exist.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet