Rowyda Amin
Monkey Daughter
On my birthday, my mother takes delivery
of a baby capuchin. All week she has been converting her study into a nursery, with a cot and yellow curtains, cupcake patterned. She feeds the monkey warm milk from a bottle, little chunks of papaya and apple. Hushes and lulls, names it Laura. The monkey’s scared brown eyes roll like olives. I want to shake them out of the jar. Laura wears tiny dungarees and pinafores, my baby clothes from the attic, where my parents had been saving them for grandchildren. Her photo replaces mine on the fridge. This one, my mother says, pinning the monkey’s nappy, will not grow up. Polly
The reason is first that I am a spectacle,
so they fetch me seeds and fresh water, guard me from cats in a house of metal filigree. For reason that my feathers spread plumes of lapis, teal, apricot, and in the non-jungle colors are rare and most prized. For that I translate the sunlight into iridescence, they have need of me. For the second it is that my voice is more ticklish than a creeping fig and more honey than kapok flowers, so that they prefer to hear their own language from my beak. Mojave
They saw themselves walking toward themselves
over peacock-feather lakes that weren’t there, but they or their reflections disappeared within touching distance. Father got drunk using up the booze from the cabin to piss pleas for help in the sand, but no planes swooped before it dried. The sand serrated Mother’s eyelids so that she wept rose-tinted tears that dripped into the daughter’s open mouth. In the morning, they found the girl floating upside down in the air. They prised open her mouth and she vomited weeds and fish that became lizards and hid in the sand. They buried her and piled up stones to keep her from floating away. Under the ground, she listened to the scaly whisperings of the lizards. Her tongue attuned to the salt of distant lakes. She grew large, sub-divided, hatched herself and scattered across the surface in twelve directions while Mother and Father crawled on their elbows through the sand, following themselves in a circle, their bodies fusing mouth to anus in a writhing ring as the snake of their mirages swallowed its tail. |
Barbies, Please!A golden bird keeps you
from crossing the fourth wall of the Dreamhouse. Swivel-necked Barbies, do not worship the bird and its glittering solvents. Bury it in the centre of the earth. O shining calves! O breast-precious transmuters! Put on your pink space suits. It is dripping golden feathers that smolder. Do not be afraid of mirrors. Find the bird and beat it beyond the death of stars with your tennis rackets and skis. Wear your Malibu sunglasses, and a sidelong glance. Beat the glowing trail from your stick-on carpets. You’re the line in China, Barbies, do not wait for your Kens, your princes without fear. The fury of the air! The golden rain outshines your chandeliers and tiki lights. Hear the crash of your pink elevator. Kick off your plastic mules, Barbies, and run tip-toe down the spiral staircase before you singe. Barbies, can’t you hear, outside, the Dream Horses prance restless in their pen? Night Work
From your bed, noctilucent paths
are rambling, one of which could lead through the Tudor knot of yew hedge to that rose arbour at its centre where white-slippered sleep is breathing. Simple to untangle one path after the next if you still had all night, but fat mice are eating through the blue and green wool with which the maze is tapestried. Though tawny owls, silver-beaked, dive to unpick the plump bodies, bursting every pink and yellow cross-stitch, you’re still awake at dawn, tattered in your threadbare nest of bones. |