kids

Our bones stuck like honey

Silken gestures grazing ground

As we flew over handlebars

And relished in dotting our bloodied scars with the same tiny

digits that made shapes with carbon-backed stars.

The nonsense made sense in its cherry-rich taste of speaking

a language of pulling funny faces.

The fear of inferior was nothing but a shifting canvas that

smelt like summer

Shedding our winter skin to become a

Firecracker of innocence

An uncorrupted, feverishly disruptive

Blazing ball of wonder

And when we expanded from its amber shell

Spitting sparks as we embraced the swell

Each filament of learning spun a grand farewell

And spoke a greeting to the less bright

Other side of where those taller weren’t glowing

I’m sure we’d never have grown up if

We’d been told where we were going.

Charly Cox

The worlds

My mum made us many worlds

overlapping in bright circles,

and made us the shape-shifting shoes

to stride into them.

She made England

and she made Australians,

mouths filed with eucalyptus phrases;

She made shop-owners,

plying our biscuits and lemonade

to ramblers in our lane

and she made ramblers,

free from the hard charm of destination.

She made an artist’s daughters,

story-hearers and selective believers.

She made tree-dwellers,

trend-leavers and fancy-dress-wearers,

irregular pegs. She made the round holes

shimmy, she made silly,

she made kindness, she made calm.

My mum makes us the world

as wide as the world

and as small as the circle of her arms.

Rachel Piercey

Praise Song for My Mother

You were

water to me

deep and bold and fathoming

You were

moon’s eye to me

pull and grained and mantling

You were

sunrise to me

rise and warm and streaming

You were

the fishes red gill to me

the flame tree’s spread to me

the crab’s leg/the fried plantain smell

replenishing replenishing

Go to your wide futures, you said

Grace Nichols

You May Have Heard of Me

My father was a bear.

He carried me through forest, sky

and over frozen sea. At night

I lay along his back

wrapped in fur and heat

and while I slept, he ran,

never stopping to rest, never

letting me fall.

He showed me how to be as careful as stone,

sharp as thorn and quick

as weather. When he hunted alone

he’d leave me somewhere safe – high up a tree

or deep within a cave.

And then a day went on . . .

He didn’t come.

I looked and looked for him.

The seasons changed and changed again.

Sleep became my friend. It even brought my father back.

The dark was like his fur,

the sea’s breathing echoed his breathing.

I left home behind, an empty skin.

Alone, I walked taller, balanced better.

So I came to the gates of this city

– tall, black gates with teeth.

Here you find me, keeping my mouth small,

hiding pointed teeth and telling stories,

concealing their truth as I conceal

the thick black fur on my back.