Masked Women and Rebooted Cities: new poetry by Ian Hunter

Two new poems – Reboot City and Who Was That Masked Woman? – for you now from Ian Hunter. Ian is a children's author, short story writer, poet, editor and occasional book reviewer. He's a member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Circle, a director of the Scottish writers collective Read Raw, and poetry editor of the British Fantasy Society Journal.


Reboot City

I am the girlfriend
Sometimes the girl next door
Exchanging glances
Awkward moments
We almost got married
I’ve been kidnapped several times
Even died, once

I am the police commissioner
Who never gets to retire
Sometimes doddering
Sometimes overweight
Sometimes steely, like my moustache
Once I’ve been black
I might be a woman next

I am the sidekick
My parents are dead
A suspicious road accident
or horribly murdered by a masked fiend
but I had my revenge
even though it killed me
Then I came back, as a girl

I am the hero
I never age
I never change
I can never escape this life
All these reboots
No wonder,  I hate this city
almost as much
as I hate myself


Who Was That Masked Woman?

I unblock the vacuum cleaner
She prevents a North Sea oil spillage

I hang out the washing
She stops a runaway train

I do the weekly shopping
She frees a whale from shallow water

I make the children’s school lunches
She holds up a broken bridge

I paint the kitchen ceiling
She diverts the lava flow

I iron the school shirts 
She stops the landslide crushing the village

I attend the parent’s night
She catches the falling cable car

I make a romantic dinner for two
She grimaces at the sound of her beeper