interglacial
Niall O'Sullivan

25°C straw titfer & sun cream smell makes me feel like I'm on holiday. daughter gets the factor 50 despite her filipino dna. when the ice sheet barred the path north of what is now condemned to be watford human footfall patterned the turf of doggerland, mutations filtered through. dry pallid skin to nab dna from dimming doses of sun. the welsh geneticist steve jones said that if a cro-magnon sat next to you on a train you'd probably change seats. if a neanderthal sat next to you on a train you'd move to another train. if a romanian sat next to nigel farage on a train then the romanian would have grounds to feel uncomfortable. they dredged up hippo bones from the banks of the thames. the romans, the normans, jimi hendrix & that lone doomed whale were all drawn to take part in this riverside sprawl. my parents came from ireland with £17 between them. if you voted ukip on thursday please stay the fuck out of my life.

Niall O'Sullivan has performed his poetry across the UK and Europe since the late nineties. He has been a resident poet for the South Kilburn Estate and the Wimbledon Championships and has released three collections of poetry with Flipped Eye. He currently hosts London's longest running poetry open mic, Poetry Unplugged, at Covent Garden's Poetry Cafe and teaches at London Metropolitan University.

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