Angela Hart
Tamslin
Crouched behind your typewriter,
Furious fingers make the keys dance;
You talk of home, Hong Kong:
In 1997, it’s going back to China.
You want to go back,
to streets bustling,
hustle for a place on a bus that takes two hours
to get to work. It’s 95 degrees.
You order blood, group A,
replace the phone. Your eyes
say nothing of your life.
At the supermarket trolleys push into you,
Racism, you explain
everyone’s the same.
‘I’m not racist,’ I insist,
but you don’t believe me. I can’t make you
understand how I worship your olive skin,
brown eyes, silent sighs. I make tea,
knock the milk over. You leave two months later.
Furious fingers make the keys dance;
You talk of home, Hong Kong:
In 1997, it’s going back to China.
You want to go back,
to streets bustling,
hustle for a place on a bus that takes two hours
to get to work. It’s 95 degrees.
You order blood, group A,
replace the phone. Your eyes
say nothing of your life.
At the supermarket trolleys push into you,
Racism, you explain
everyone’s the same.
‘I’m not racist,’ I insist,
but you don’t believe me. I can’t make you
understand how I worship your olive skin,
brown eyes, silent sighs. I make tea,
knock the milk over. You leave two months later.
Page(s) 15
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