The Death of Baroness Thatcher

The Death of Baroness Thatcher

after Patricia McGuigan and Alexander Pope

Her hair was a headmistress dreaming

of again being allowed to use the cane.

Her ambition was a brass door knocker

on what was once a council house.

Her brain was a conversation about money

Sir Keith Joseph had with himself.

Her back passage was Basil Fawlty

complaining about car strikes to the Major.

The look in her eyes was a shoot to kill policy

in Northern Ireland.

Her sentimentality was a spinster’s thimble

in which you could fit what’s left of the Tory Party

in Scotland, Liverpool, Manchester,

Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle...

Her clenched fist was a skinhead

in nothing but Union Jack y-fronts.

She said the word ‘Europe’

like a woman coming down

from a severe overdose of Brussels Sprouts.

Her Christmases were dinner at Chequers

with a recently deceased sex offender.

Her ‘out’, ‘no’, ‘never’

were striking print workers

being given the cat of nine tails.

Her fingers and thumbs

were ten riot shields in a row.

Her final nightmare

was the silent, black eyed ghosts

of Joe Green and David Jones *

who did nothing but each offer her

a hand.

KEVIN HIGGINS

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* David Gareth Jones, from Wakefield, died amid violent scenes outside Ollerton colliery in Nottinghamshire on 15 March 1984. On 15 June Joe Green was crushed to death by a lorry while picketing in Ferrybridge, West Yorkshire. 

Kevin Higgins is a poet in Galway Ireland