share


My Mother’s Hands

shed coral scales

& sunrise. In England, the inside

 

is ashen. She touches tangerine flowers,

when a woman

 

exiting her home in Camberwell cries,

go back to where you come from, as if

 

she carries still the scent

of dragon-fruit. I swallow

 

cherry stones. I flower

your abandoned garden

 

in my belly, to carry in me the whispers

of all your lost colours. I dream

 

in shades of lilac. Sometimes

my tummy hurts.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

grew up between Oxford and Mexico City, with stints spent in France and Italy, and began writing poetry while living in Boston, Massachusetts. Her poems have been published in British, American and Canadian journals, including Blackbox Manifold, Colorado Review, The Missouri Review and Willow Springs, and are recently anthologised in Un Nuevo Sol: British Latinx Writers (flipped eye, 2019). 



READ NEXT

Prize Entry

April 2015

I Told You...

Owen Booth

Prize Entry

April 2015

1. The Triumph of Capitalism   It was the end of the cold war and capitalism had won. Everywhere...

fiction

January 2014

Textile

Orly Castel-Bloom

TR. Dalya Bilu

fiction

January 2014

It was not only avoiding thoughts of home that helped the good sniper to carry out his mission as...

feature

July 2012

Theatre's Arab Turn

Tanjil Rashid

feature

July 2012

Apart from the odd Shakespearean exception, from Othello the Moor of Venice to the Merchant of Venice’s marginal Moroccan...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required