Port Sunlight
Me and my mum are cornered in the kitchen.
She is busy and I am busy
keeping quiet, keeping out of her way.
It’s washday and it is all my fault –
these are my sheets, my vest and pants,
this is the cloth that scrubbed my knees.
My dad’s outside, but I am not allowed.
Mum picks up the box and pours out
speckled powder from Port Sunlight.
I think of lego-blue boats and swans
in pairs as white as socks and rows
of shining factories with red gates.
I trace a line of water down the cupboard front
and onto the floor, paddle my fingers in the dirt
and imagine the boats sailing seawards with
their cargoes of cornflakes and cotton and tubs
of golden oil and sacks of dark brown sugar.
Outside, the lawn’s as choppy as a sea
under shirt-shaped clouds, and I
am sailing away to Port Sunlight where all
the children go to school in gleaming underwear.
Page(s) 79
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