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It’s inky-early outside and I’m wearing my knitted scarf, like  

John Betjeman, poet of the British past. 

I like to go outside straight away and stand in the brisk air. 

 

Yesterday, you vanished into those snowflakes like the ragged beast  

You are. 

Perhaps I can write here again. 

“A fleeting sense of possibility.” – K. 

Keywords: Hospitality, stars, jasmine,  

Privacy. 

You made a space for me in your home, for my books and clothes, and I’ll  

Never forget that. 

And so, when your adopted daughter, an “Asian refugee,”  

As you described her, 

Came in with her coffee and perched on the end 

Of my cot, I felt so happy. 

And less like a hoax. 

Showed her how to drink water  

From the bowls 

On the windowsill. 

 

I don’t want to beautify our collective trauma. 

Your sexual brilliance resided, I sometimes thought, in your ability 

To say, no matter the external  

Circumstances: “I am here.” 

From this place, you gave only this many 

Dessicated fucks 

About the future.   

Day by day, you discovered what happiness is. 

As your guest, I trained myself 

To beautify 

Our collective trauma. 

When night fell at last, I turned with a sigh  

 

Towards the darkness.   

I am about to squeeze out an egg, you 

Murmured 

As you kissed me  

Goodnight. 

Hold a funeral for the imagination, 

I thought. 

 

To my left is a turquoise door and to my right, a butcher’s 

Table.  

On the table is a heart 

Dressed with glitter. 

When I described the set of my play, an environment more vivid 

To me than the memory 

Of my childhood home, your 

Face 

Turned green.   

What made you know something was over?  

The milk in your eyes 

Scared me. 

In that moment, I understood that you were a wolf 

Capable of devouring 

My internal organs 

If I exposed them to view. 

Sure enough, the image of a heart 

Carved from the body 

Appeared 

In the next poem you wrote. 

 

There’s a bright caul of fire 

And cream  

As I write these words, stretching out 

These early spring or late winter 

Mornings with coffee 

And TV.   

I don’t remember 

The underneath,  

Everything I will miss when I die. 

It’s exhausting to be a guest 

In somebody else’s house 

Forever. 

Even though the host invites 

The guest to say 

Whatever it is they want to say, 

The guest knows that host logic 

Is variable. 

Prick me. 

And I will cut off the energy 

To your life. 

 

How to wash a heart: 

Remove it. 

Animal or ice?  

The curator’s question reveals 

Their power style. 

If power implies relationship, 

Then here we are 

At the part where even if something 

Goes wrong, 

That’s exactly how it’s meant to be. 

Your job is to understand 

What the feedback is. 

It’s such a pleasure to spend time 

Outside the house. 

There’s nowhere to go with this 

Except begin: 

To plunge my forearms  

Into the red ice 

That is already melting  

In the box. 

 

My spiritual power was quickly depleted 

By living with you. 

Like an intrusive mother, you 

Cared for my needs  

But also, I never knew 

When you might open my door, leaving it open 

When you left. 

My identity as a writer was precarious 

During the time 

I lived with you. 

Once, you locked me in. 

An accident. 

My spine against a tree 

When I dreamed that night. 

Contact nature  

On all fours, said the counselor 

Help me to repair 

What is broken and immortal. 

Is that the bin? 

 

I come from a country  

All lime-pink on the soggy map. 

Destroy me, 

My soul whispered. 

Eat me, bones and all. 

Crush me in a vise. 

Stop me  

From walking out  

That door. 

The balloon deity 

I made from the condom 

On the floor 

Was purgative, revolting, 

Brilliant. 

Her lips were pursed. 

It doesn’t matter 

That you made so many mistakes, 

She said. 

Violence rots the brain. 

Go. 

 

I do not enjoy eating too much. 

It’s so painful. 

The only remedy is the bitter herb 

That grows by a rushing brook. 

Oils, sugars, pearls, crushed diamonds, linens and songs 

Populate your crappy cabinets. 

Make a list of what you need 

And I will get it, you ungrateful cow. 

This is what I need: 

The light and the heart and the yesterday 

Of my work. 

A candle on the wonky table at dusk. 

How thyme migrates.  

The chalky blue flowers. 

I need something that burns as slowly 

As that. 

Because living with someone who is in pain 

Requires you to move in a different way. 

You bang the cup down 

By my sleepy head. 

 

And that’s the end of the excerpts reading these poems aloud, I can see myself, sitting on a sofa. And Sharon Anne Horn’s house in Loveland, Co, trying to write a book that could be published in England. I remember it vividly sitting in the sun on the corner of that sofa. And the work came to me all at once, all at once, and I wrote it without thinking like a download, you could say. But they also notice that hidden inside these poems are memories of my time in other places. Of gardens that I cultivated, conversations that I had. For instance, the line a candle on the wonky table at dusk that was a table, a card table given to me by my sons grandma when she passed away. But yeah, I just. I just like to sit at it like in front of the window and would always light a candle. Thinking of Lorca and how he couldn’t bear dusk and always had to light a candle. And on and on. There’s a bitter herb that grows by rushing brook I remember. Walking by a stream with my mother and a young woman who had been trafficked at a local Indian restaurant who had shown up at our house in quite a state and we took her. Anyway, it ended well. She now has triplets in Baltimore, married Nepali sous chef, but I remember she was recovering from her kind of treatment from the family who’d been running the restaurant on Eisenhower Ave and we’re just walking on Devil’s Backbone in Loveland and they both just sort of saw this herb growing by a brook or a stream and recognised it as something that, you know, their mothers or grandmothers would kind of cook up in a pan with a bit of ghee, I suppose. Or oil. And I just remember like it’s like sporty type people were kind of running by or mountain bike or hikers and there’s my mum and neelam, like crouching down, harvesting this this herb. That grew wild. Anyway, I’ll pause there. Thank you for listening to my poems. And perhaps you’re a poet also, perhaps. Perhaps you longed you longed to write. And. So just in these last moments, I’m thinking of you. I never knew that we would write alongside. I never knew when I was a child and then a young person in this country in this city, if indeed you are listening to these poems in England or even in London, I never knew that there would be such bright, impervious company. Anyway, that is the end of my reading, which I will dedicate to Blupietta and Thelonius. Thank you. Bye.