Coats hanging on the Ha’penny Bridge Dublin today. Photo: RollingNews.ie
Coats left for the homeless last week on Ha’penny Bridge, Dublin, were later removed by Dublin City Council for causing ‘congestion’. Here is MA in Creative Writing graduand, poet Molly Twomey’s timely response, featured on Broadsheet – https://www.broadsheet.ie/2019/12/16/no-jackets-required
Zip It
We ask you to kindly halt
leaving your parkas and jackets
to warm the homeless
for we cannot have tourists
distracted from their whiskey
lattes and Aran jumpers.
They’ll stop taking selfies,
we’ll have nothing left
to post on Lovin’ Dublin.
We have given your coats
to Oxfam for students
to buy, resell, repay their loans.
Your woollen hats and mittens
are a real congestion issue.
People are bumping
into each other like scabies
on a child’s elbow.
If they really want a home,
they’d apply for the HAP
scheme on their iPhones.
Look, we can’t build more shelters
or estates, we just gave 23 million
to a rafting course; kayaking,
water polo. We don’t mind
stags and hens pissing
down Camden’s Place, snorting
coke off Molly Malone’s tits.
At least they’re not setting up
tents like whack-a-moles
outside the church,
making it hard to stomach
our tuna melts. Feeling guilt
when we tuck in
the bathed skin of our children
under plastic moons
and glow in the dark stars.