"Well Travelled Luggage" by Richard Vergine

At the airport's large-intestinal tract,
we wait for what we packed yesterday,
conveyer belt contestants from The Generation Game.

Your case emerges first,
slender and stately.
Twenty-eight hours
and not a zip out of place.

My backpack burps and sprawls against a sports bag,
engorged and bored with lack of space.

Never one to drag its wheels,
your suitcase states there's Nothing to Declare.

My backpack waits, knows different.
Its guts are stuffed to bursting and it shows.

Your killjoy case struts off outside.
The carousel lays claim to mine.
I let it spin -
again.

Susan Richardson is a writer and tutor of writing based in Wales. Her work has appeared in a wide range of journals, both print and online, in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia, including Envoi, Iota, Flashquake, Fail Better, Other Poetry and The Affectionate Punch. Her poetic drama Two Of Me Now, about literary and biological motherhood, as manifest in the lives and work of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, is published by Cecil Woolf in The Bloomsbury Heritage Series. To find out more about Susan's work, please visit her website: http//:www.susanrichardsonwriter.co.uk

Contact Susan Richardson at comments@moondance.org