Poetry

  • Shoplifter of the world

    My first steal: an ice-pop, coaxed from the cornershop freezer andlifted: a brittle, syrupy limb that fused—beneath my shirtsleeve—onto my skin. Second, a tidy slice of apple strudel (cadged behind the café proprietor’sback). Its fudge of apples branded my pocket with a bloom of grease. Years on, the shoes: size eight men’s brogues. I had…

  • Anthropologies

    She says it’s haven’t, not ent. Miz Jezameen Henacre wears long-tailed     glovesspilled over her skinnies like milk froth. She fears palm-skin maybe, its thinness. She teaches me how to say     her name,sharpen the een. She totters her bell skirts, her own self, here from the Mission housemidway through Sundays, when our floor and walls are spanking and…

  • Nickname

    a little one, drab, barely skyborne,with nothing of the gut-unravelingacumen of the scavenger                 this is Jackselflimping across marshland, making a decoyof himself, piping up when the day goes dim,so close to the ground he’s almost it     small wonder Peewitis the name the other boys have given him,not Jackdaw, not Rook     the gods of bracken and fly-tipped tornblack plastic…

  • At Peckham Rye

    Lately, I see through a narrow chink in a stairgate.I see doors and think: can I get my pram through that?In the park, I dole out small snacks—ricecake, popped grapes, elven cheeses. If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would be infinite but I have closed us up in stacky cups,a nursery and naptimes;in…

  • My Wolverine

    When my mother says I was her kittaken from her too early,I think not of cats but a wolverine,my devourer of snowfields, who,when she can find no more prey,eats herself, even the frozen bones.I crawl down the black phone lineas if it’s an umbilicusto the last refuge on our planet,towards whatever back countryhappens to be…

  • Jaguar Girl

    Her gaze is tipped with curare, her face farouchefrom the kids’ asylum where ice bathsfailed to tame her. Her claws are crescent moonssharpened on lightning. She swims through the star-splintersof a mirror and emerges snarling—my were-Mama. She’s a rainforestin a straitjacket. Where she leapsthe sky comes alive, unleashedfrom its bottle. My mother, trying to concealher…

  • Mama Amazonica

                   1. Picture my mother as a baby, afloaton a waterlily leaf, a nametag round her wrist—Victoria amazonica. There are rapids aheadthe doctors call “mania.” For now, all is quiet—she’s on a deep sleep cure, a sloth clings to the cecropia tree,a jaguar sniffs the bank. My mother on her green raft,its web of ribs, its…

  • The Willow Forest

    What with the pogroms, the genocide,the ethnic cleansing, the secret massacres,the mass graves, the death camps, the public executions,at last there was nobody left,the country was empty.Survivors who reached the bordersbecame refugees. Rebuked by that silence beyond the mountains,the victors planted willows and in due coursethe country grew into a willow forest.The trees hung their…