Poem: Appeal to Potential Asylum Seekers

We reprint this poem from our friend and satirist Kevin Higgins. If we change some names and other small details it can apply, not only to Ireland and the UK but to the US or any other nation that is faced with economic refugees and those seeking asylum from the numerous capitalist wars and interventions western, and especially US capitalism, wages in the world. This poem was originally published on The Platform writers site.

Appeal to Potential Asylum Seekers
By Order of Her Majesty’s Government

The desserts of Vienna are creamier
than is the case in even
the better bits of Leeds or Swansea.
Their trams turn up when they’re meant to,
which is hardly ever true
of an outskirts-of-Great-Yarmouth Saturday night,
except when Prince Edward is dying,
re-marrying, or giving birth,
and there’s an Ian Stuart Donaldson concert to celebrate.

Also, we think it important we clarify:
Hugh Grant is not a real person.
So, there’s no point coming here
in the hope of making him
your husband, or even,
your wife.

Contrary to reports in the popular press:
our social security is in fact rubbish.
And we’re working hard to make it worse.
You’ll toil all the hours picking
shells off a beach in the dark;
or clean a pretend bank
for less per week than
Andrew Neil pays to have
his back waxed.

And you’ll have nowhere to live,
given our plan to gift
the last council house to former
model Jerry Hall
for rest and recuperation
the day after she’s taken annually
by Rupert Murdoch, as she’s now
contractually bound
to let herself be.

If you stay where you are,
as a gesture, we offer you
Richard Branson. The first forty four
legitimate asylum seekers
to complete the relevant form will each
be entitled to one of his teeth,
for use perhaps as collateral or
as a miniature sex toy –

on condition you remove
it at your own leisure using
the rudimentary
chisel provided.

From Poems for Grenfell Tower published by The Onslaught Press

About the author

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He teaches poetry workshops and is a poetry critic with The Galway Advertiser. Kevin has published four collections of poetry: The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), Frightening New Furniture (2010), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), and his best-selling first collection, The Boy With No Face (2005). The Stinging Fly magazine recently described Kevin as "likely the most read living poet in Ireland”. Follow him on Twitter @KevinHIpoet1967.