Young People’s Laureate
For London

doctor says there is something wrong with your thyroid / you are known
to leak everywhere / to take the shape of whatever / wherever you are
poured into / you do not contest his claim / or any other man with his
hands around your throat / before the appointment / you slice a heart /
swallow breath mints to disguise / the miasma of desperation / slide a
ring onto each finger / bejewel a somatic distraction / let the Gulf of
Aden run ragged / from the twinned lakes / of shoulder blades / an
inherited wetness behind the ears / you kiss / the mirror’s cold navel /
with the kind of pride that comes naturally / to those born carrying
history as an extra limb / to the sticky yolk of grief / you do not think
you are a Good Person™ / not with the way you cough up contradiction
/ phlegm thick as Aramco / poverty’s slick jaw / or how you gloss your
mouth with a humanitarian shade of pink / dress each lie in crushed
pearls / but because you remember the names of your brothers / never
your sisters / your sister’s sisters / your sisters who are an occurrence /
never an event / never a shudder when they stop occurring / there is
nothing to mark their arrival / or leaving / Hodan aged 21 / and six
months / who doused herself in liquid surrender / set herself alight / her
second attempt at peace / in the bulletin thumbnail she wears royal blue
/ looks like a woman you would powder / your nose next to / at a
wedding / wrist against cheek / soft wick of her rimmed eyes / banjee
queen / doe-eyed diva / dhow-hearted / what did they do to you / onto
you / at Nauru Regional Processing Centre / what did this processing
look like / OPC1 / where detainees sew their lips together / silence
themselves before they are silenced / where women hoard cloths to plug
their bleeding / hide from both inmates and guards / carry the children
of men who did not ask / infants who did not ask / an island of orphans
/ of what could have been you / but is not you / will never be you / from
across the ambit / oh for fate’s insurgencies / its sweet edge / the
topologies of our lives / their sharpened sighs / soft implosions of flip-
flops/ on airport floors / you dream in eastern time / wait for the hijaz
to collect / the bags under your eyes / for her to warm your pulse / with
her hands / her cratered lap / friends described her as a “gentle soul” who
had been “destroyed” / by her time in detention / you note the
alliterative phrasing / a velvet undoing / there are as many ways to be
destroyed / as there are droplets on the tongue / to describe it / Hodan
rolls in your mouth / draws salt from saliva / you think of the white of
nerve endings / the melting of dermis / grass hissing underfoot / all that
separates her / from / you / me / is a slip of a generation / a fistful of
decades / in another life / the war that broke you / breaks ten years
ahead / and you are the one drowning / you are forgotten / in this life /
you rest on the pillow of abstraction / on your passport / the freedom
papers of this age / your proximity to the bodies that terrorise hers / the
rolled dice of your life / it is what it is / every poem that falls /
chandeliered / is about this distance / its heavy head on your lap / its hot
laugh on your neck / its doll-like teeth marks / you have never known a
violence
/ worse / than / coincidence /

© Momtaza Mehri, 2017

First published by The Poetry Society in The Poetry Review, 108.1, Spring 2018; 3^rd Prize winner in the 2017 National Poetry Competition.

© Momtaza Mehri, 2017

Momtaza Mehri at The Complete Works Poetry 3 launch of the Bloodaxe Anthology, Ten: Voices of the New Generation ( Ed. Karen McCarthy Woolf). Southbank, November 9th, 2017. Published on YouTube on 2 Dec 2017.

our blood has a love affair with drains & sinkholes
even we can’t come between

between the pavement and our teeth     the gap is always narrow
& someone is always trying to die
as quietly as possible

possible as it may be          i have no time for soft boys with soft voices
wearing a mother’s pay-check on their feet
shoelaces as ragged as their nightly breath

breath as asset seizure     you are this & more      you are a pop song
that lasts just over three minutes
a hundred & twenty seconds worth of undoing

undoing what the world has done to me is a full-time job
yes i am gassed up         & drunk off my own subjectivity
& hurting
the way women raised on prophets & rappers
are bound to             both die young & leave poor imitations

imitations or disappointments               both i am used to             my little hot oil splash.
meet me in the middle
someplace where the breeze licks at ears
& grief wears something other               than a fitted cap
& no-one mentions words that don’t mean anything
childish shit like freedom                       & safety                            & eventually

& home.

© Momtaza Mehri, 2018

Published by Four Hubs on 3 March 2018.

Those days madrassa meant a room above the café. No chairs. Laughter and conspiracy. Sizzled fat to perfume the conversation of men too long in the tooth for niceties. They had no indoor voices. We would impersonate the shoulder pop of the Indian Ocean. A cypher perfected by the baton of the macalin’s stick ruler. Counting down until the break. Our ritual of grape juice boxes and contraband chocolate. We sat on our hind legs like the sun outside the dirty windows. Stained our front teeth with shaani and everything else as imported and pigmented as we were. Doomsday gossip. We swapped the coming signs. How we were taught the world would end. All the major and minor undoings. How the Hour would fall when Bedouins constructed the tallest buildings. We’d been to Dubai that one hot summer and seen this for our young selves. Drew parallels on each other’s palms. Signs like the blinking of years, winters that would feel like summers, the sun’s agonising rise from the west. Our bitten knuckles taut over lips. We wanted a glorious ending. We wanted a movie. We dreamed of a finale to freeze the blood. Each day we’d wake to someone’s world ending. As sure as milk froth and betrayal, we saw our parents and their parents take their cues from the planet and grow indifferent to their own bodies. Too young to understand hooded men balanced on boxes or poverty’s slick-talking jaw, we still knew. The world is a hang-nail. This conclusion drawn from the quantitative analysis of playground spite, imposed bed times and the terror of accidentally walking into our mothers’ silent sobs. Grief sprinkled like rice at a wedding. Born into and out of wandering. Collapse was our way of standing still. Is it selfish to want the world to feel your pain too? To blister the way you do? Forgive the children for their jagged dreams. Forgive those so young and so over it already. They do not mean what they say when they say they will play in the freshly turned soil of a split earth. They will tickle the Beast behind its perky ears. They will ride its back down down down into a land of worms and warmth. Into the only place that will receive them as esteemed guests. As homecoming. As family.

© Momtaza Mehri, 2018

Published by Sun Song on 19 February 2018.

Momtaza Mehri joins BBC Radio 4 Newsday to talk about her new role as Young People’s Laureate for London.