Red Devon Read Online Free PDF

the mirror, splashes on Brut,
    digs out his one good suit and is good to go.
    Jo rakes through her wardrobe, twice, but nothing appeals.
    Weeks, she’s been waiting for this – like an old fool –
    the one day of the year Grunt’s off duty in a public place.
    She looks in the mirror, checks her face, her arse.
    â€œA Devon heifer,” she mutters. “Beef to the heels.”
    It’s boy-girl-boy at the supper. John Teague
    sits up straight all night admiring Jo’s cleavage
    until Colin invites him outside to see his new pick-up.
    Jo empties her glass for courage, and another for luck
    and the evening starts to come unstuck. She has vague
    impressions of Grunt laughing, Grunt filling her glass,
    his arm warm on the back of her chair, his eyes amused,
    his smile lopsided like a tick, a sum well done,
    and she decides to take the chance before it’s gone,
    leans forward to kiss him (just do it!) bold as brass.
    Jo lets herself in back home, quietly, late.
    Sees herself in the mirror in a different light.
    She’s clutching a napkin covered with Grunt’s rough scrawl.
    A map to a meeting place, a car park on the moor.
    Not quite the romance she’d been hoping for. But a date.

Tercio de Muerte
    Blokes in this business would write Grunt as Theseus.
    Godlike (him being a god) he grapples the bull,
    lugs it to London to parade along Pall Mall
    then coolly butchers it in the name of Reason.
    Or Grunt as Toreador, humble but worthy
    practitioner of fine art playing to the stands,
    his suit of lights coruscating against beige sands,
    dealing hard truths in the Tercio de Muerte.
    Or Grunt as bull-runner, giving the beast the slip,
    vaulting or somersaulting honed handlebar horns,
    depicted in a mosaic, a fresco or as a carved figurine
    in a rite of passage, an initiation ritual, or act of worship.
    So much for history, then. Teague found him huddled
    at the foot of the shed wall, flail chest, not a moan,
    crumpled in all the wrong places. Grunt as dead man.
    But how it was, after the first broadside hustle,
    when things started to get… how to put it… ugly,
    when that great head, that alien will of iron
    kept on coming for Grunt, what flashed before his eyes,
    what he was thinking, no-one knows. Not even me.

The Ballad of Grunt Garvey and Jo Tucker
    Oh for a story as simple as boy meets girl
    with a love that lasts and a future little Jo
    who walks plastic cows up the ramp of her toy truck
    while little Grunt waves a stick to make them go.
    At eight Jo parks, unfolds and folds the map,
    listens to the metal tick as the big truck cools.
    Low sun flames the gorse. A buzzard mews.
    How does she feel? How do you think she feels?
    I wanted so much more for Jo than this
    slow lengthening of shadows, this swift descent
    winding her way back home through chilly lanes
    trying to guess what was or wasn’t meant.
    And still to come: the horror of Grunt’s yard.
    Jo standing unacknowledged in the crowd.

Shambles
    Poets and pigs are appreciated only after their death
    â€“ Italian proverb

Agnus Scythicus
    Also known as the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, this legendary
    animal/plant hybrid was believed to grow sheep as a fruit .
    In medieval times it was used to explain the existence of cotton .
    Here in God’s Own Country, our harvests are legend.
    From John Mandeville to Gulliver, travelers flock
    to rhapsodise the fruits of our sun-kissed ground.
    The jewel in our crown is the Vegetable Lamb
    which springs skyward on a single artichoke stalk,
    pendulous limbs hanging slack from a fleece-blurred bloom.
    Each fruit is wrapped in a boll of whisked wool
    to protect it from wolves. When the monsoon smiles
    water pours from the pods like silk from a spool.
    The umbilicus bends to allow the lamb to graze
    as far as the cord goes, on nard and camomile.
    It circles daintily on hooves of parted hair.
    People in God’s Own Country borrow and sow, sow
    and borrow, attended by thrip and moth