THE FOLLOWING POEM WAS SELECTED IN WINGWORD POETRY PRIZE 2023 LONGLIST.
Our brand new Ambassador car
Was all painted ivory.
I remember how then, I danced round and round
Like it was a golden tambourine.
Mother kept jasmine flowers
Hanging upon its laughing bonnet
Young smoking father, he
broke two coconuts
upon its engine,
to drive away the devils and the gremlins.
And our driver stomped into the hard steering
driving his Bela kiss mush
lit jog sticks, and pinned
them there into the air vent
like she was a girl that must be perfumed
before first night .
We turned the yellow thing
Into a pinned lemon butterfly.
Well, now with hands gone shaking
this morning I wake from sleep,
in a dream of dead dogs
& red kitten heads
rolling from
the old school book shelf,
With the ghosts of father and
mother
framed upon dead skin on the wall
and love
Steaming from its boiling radiator;
My childhood dead in its red oxide dickey.