Celebrity Stoning on Thin Ice
 
It’s very easy to shout insults
to people that I can’t look in the eye,
to an online presence who might as well be a ghost
haunting the blue walls of a white bird
 
They call it cancelling
but it used to be called public shaming,
boycotting
bullying
 
It’s a commodity –
you give me one opinion,
I give you two fingers
and three minutes to take it back
 
or you’re retweeted as threadworms
spreading from the anus to the mouth of the internet
but who wins in the end?
Gameshows, that’s who.

Cumbria native Terri Metcalfe has been published in Abridged, A New Ulster, Green Ink Poetry, Spilling Cocoa and Skylight 47 amongst others. Shortlisted for the Open Window 2023 mentorship programme, she will be a featured reader at the 20th anniversary of Over The Edge Literary Events held in Galway this January.