Mountains of rubbish rise. Wagons arrive twenty or thirty times a day. The smell makes you gag. Maggots, rats and flies. Nine days of flames.

a prophecy
not of the gods but gangs
brazen and organised

The oracle speaks through acrid clouds. We close our doors. An old man hospitalised by a chest infection.

rising smoke
our fortune unfolds
in bin bags and skips

Paul Conneally
December 2025
Loughborough
UK