Playing Space Invaders

He ignored empty places down the carriage, sidled
into the seat beside her, wafted sour beer, stale smoke.

‘Cheer up love,’ he leered, ‘it might never happen’.
It just had, she wanted to tell him.

‘What’s it about?’ he nudged her, nodded to her book.
‘Cartesian Dualism,’ she lied, almost spat.

He nodded again, as though he understood.
For a split second she thought she’d been sussed,

was relieved to see his sneer
dismissing her as a smart-ass.

Off the hook, (she wouldn’t know where to start
with Descartes) she resumed reading.

Ann Gibson spent her childhood in Dublin and now lives in North Yorkshire. She has published poetry in Acumen, Prole, Dream Catcher, Obsessed with Pipework, Orbis, and The Poets’ Republic, as well as online in Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, The High Window, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Ofi Press Magazine and The Ekphrasis Review.