Dean Atta
Fragments of Faye #3
The second week in
hospital, you are so weak.
They wash you in your bed
but you beg to have a shower
and they agree to use a hoist;
you tell me about it with such glee.
I try to remember you
before your face was gaunt
and your legs were swollen,
before your stomach was a balloon,
before the cancer in your womb
spread. And I remember:
you have come to visit
us at university in Brighton,
you stay with Tracey
and the girls. I come by
in the morning, ready for
our day of activities.
They tell me you’re still
in the shower. You come down
singing to yourself,
you smile, ‘Sorry,’ you say,
with a not-sorry shrug,
‘I just love a long shower.’
You smile so wide, your
cheekbones so high, your
skin slick with shea butter,
your long locs so neat,
tightly twisted at the roots,
and now you are ready.
Some Things I Like
After Lemn Sissay
I like when we get up at the first alarm.
I like when we don’t need an alarm,
and get up whenever we feel like it,
preferably after sex and conversation.
I like spending time with other people
and coming back to you with gossip.
I like being on stage, in a classroom,
in a restaurant, cafe, library, cinema,
theatre, bar, club, bookshop, yoga class.
I like being away, I like planes and trains,
especially when paid for by poetry.
I like going places and strangers’ faces.
I like you. I like you. I like you. I like us.
When
we take a break
from arguing
to make two cups of tea
when we are running
but too far apart to talk
there is still love here
when we take a drive
and listen to a podcast
when we are hiking
and I am struggling
and you seem impatient
when I stop for water
the wind whistles in my ear
there is still love here.
DEAN ATTA’s debut poetry collection, I Am Nobody’s Nigger, was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. His novel in verse, The Black Flamingo, won the 2020 Stonewall Book Award.