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Spread out before you,
whipped and bright coloured,
dripping with sauces,
a world of unimagined flavours,
untranslatable.
Through countless retrievals, our memories of precious moments lose their ‘truth.’
Below the wall the soil
leeches contaminants
from an artificial hill rising
out of the field like a wart.
the small hours are all about compost—
wanderlust of priceless larvae
& transcendent effect of unremarkable habits
Around December, our grove
of banana plants grew heavy, saba begging:
to be picked, coated in brown sugar, wrapped
in lumpia wrapper, and fried in sugary oil.
‘As I listened to music and wrote poems, the space came alive, became my balcony garden, and gave new life to me.’
you said it’s tradition in Spain that as the clock
strikes twelve we must scoff a grape a chime
one at a time, but quickly as any left over become
unsalvageable, each one a rotten, failing month.
our language, a softness taken root
a teaspoon of rain over us
as we greet this new life
A version of this piece first appeared on Trampset In April, the reality of the pandemic fades into the background as my family deals with our own internal crisis. The house is in Kemsing, a southern English village in the Kent countryside. It is nestled on the slopes of the North Downs, a range of…
Just a spoonful satisfyingly sears on the way down, tickling all the microvilli on its magic school bus trip through the body. A taste so tangy, a flavor so fearless. Anything but diluted, the way I’d always told myself to be.
I saw them. In the mind’s eye.
A vision once obscured, then clarified.
‘where reality and subconsciousness overlap and everything blends.’
Porridge 