by Scott Lilley
A bloated bottle you’d find and say:
That’s more piss than cider
this morning. But last night
it was a mini plastic tank truck,
or DOT-111 slugging down
a railway to deliver its gloopy
stock — both hold language
of their own, but this 3-litre bottle
of combustion fuel contains
a religion within its cylinder;
its disciples range from teenagers
cast on flames of iron fences,
to men sleeping in doorway temples,
high from its holy saccharine spirit —
its holy water induces glossolalia
much faster than a Budweiser.
A religion so cheap
you’d consider it naturally formed;
hurdling from the ground
before bottled at a derrick.
But believers yearn for its afterlife;
well hidden in the sigh of compressed gas
releasing at the twist of its cap.
It’s a religion you could arrive at;
traversing tarmac playgrounds,
in bushes bordering car parks,
or floating on a brackish loch.
A peeling label becomes its psalm:
Apple Cider is my shepherd: I shall
not want. 7.5% alcohol
maketh me lie down
in green pasture.
Scott Lilley is twenty-two years old living in Shropshire. He recently graduated from Lancaster University and is currently reading towards an MSt in Creative Writing at Oxford University. His previous work has been included in The Airgonaut, Poetry NI’s FourXFour, Eunoia Review and Three Line Poetry. He can be found on Twitter @scottglilley.
