A Poem by Mary Ford Neal

High Definition

The man is in his fifties. The man
speaks with some authority. The man was,
until recently, a prominent backbench MP
and select committee chair. The man has a column
in a national broadsheet newspaper and sits on the board
of a high-profile charity. The man has close friends
caught up in the terrible events in the other country.
The man says:

No-one should be committing acts of terrorism.
No-one should be committing war crimes.
Both of these things are true.
This is not a difficult thing to say.

The man is correct. This is not a difficult thing
to say. In the television studio in central London
the man has finished speaking, and the presenter nods,
and all of the men and women are perfectly presentable,
and all of the rules about what may be said are clearly
spelled out in Ofcom Guidance, and the pictures
on the monitors and on the vast screens behind him
are so sharp, it’s as though you were there.

Mary Ford Neal is a writer and academic from the West of Scotland. She is the author of two collections: Dawning (Indigo Dreams, 2021) and Relativism (Taproot Press, 2022). She is currently finalising two pamphlets.