Entry tags:
That Thing Around Your Neck
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Old Tie
by John Agard
A striped reminder
of the embers of empire.
*
A nostalgic neck-binder
for a post-colonial evening.
*
An emblem that divides
insiders from outsiders.
*
A prop for suicide
by way of strangulation.
*
An icon of Eton
worn even with the heat on.
*
A signifying signpost
to the nearest pubic station.
*
A crested spearhead
into male bonding.
*
A formal demarcator
of respect for the dead.
*
A diagonal entry
into the Royal Artillery.
*
A cross-sexual accessory
of gender-bending politics.
*
A Freudian substitute
for the umbilical cord.
*
A subliminal throwback
to the Neanderthal club.
*
In Nansi's motley wardrobe
the tie, on the other hand,
could be quite simply
a polka dot silk paddle
to row the sea of circumstance.
