Cracking The Flags

Another piece of World Cup fiction here, this one by Sarah Clare-Conlon, I'll let her give you the introduction:


"I was in the Howgills in Cumbria, watched the match in a pub then went
hiking across fields in the blazing sun past marshy bogs and thought about
how some might take drowning their sorrows to extremes. I tried to use
the repetition of words, sounds and ideas, along with the repetition of the
last line and the decreasing 11-9-7 rhythm of each verse, to convey a sense
of depressing inevitability and pointlessness, especially following the
initial hopeful flag-waving antics the nation puts itself through. Anyway,
see what you think..."


Cracking the flags, by Sarah-Clare Conlon

The crackle of England flags in the stiff wind
The stiff drink drowning England's sorrows
on a cracking-the-flags day.

A damp squib, a squabble, a sticky quagmire.
A drowning in the depths of despair
on a cracking-the-flags day.