Neighbour
Poem by Krishan Coupland
– Krishan Coupland is a graduate from the University of East Anglia MA Creative Writing programme and currently resides in Edinburgh.
Illustration by Sarah Bissell
Killed twenty-six
before they found him.
Twenty-six. Cut the bodies
into tiny pieces and flushed them
down the drain, bones and all, teeth
clattering off the waste disposal fan, blood
forming a soap-scum ring around the plughole.
Flesh decayed in the sewers, feasted by rats, until
the neighbours complained about the smell, and the
drains were opened, and all those tiny bones were brought
out into the day, dyed yellow as chicken skin, cut to tiny cubes
