who are you,
when you take off your feathers to walk
amidst the raining snow you stop
and bend
and pick up that marble
wonder at its insides
and transmit onto yourself
the luscious curvatures
the random cries of colour –
from your eyes to your legs –
and imagine yourself beloved
instigate the anger of others in your haughty step
named three times in agony
a woman, a bird, a feather
in neither has your nature been
where do you find your soul?

Karem Roitman
St Cross College

 

 

 

I trace the line of hair on your lip
   My first night in your room
   I smile       am not
surprised to see frida in white dress
on the wall

Back in another country

another room

Frida and I (and her monkey) have met

            before on Lucy’s wall

Aditi Thorat
Lincoln College

 

 

inside the woman
a subservient spirit
naps
with an open eye
and a foolish heart
awaiting a rude call
from an obsessive lover

Nneoma Nwogu
St Antony’s College

 

 

 

I went to university to learn a new language
Arabic (al-lugha al-arabiyya)
Now I speak three:English, Arabic
And English.

In the comfort of North London
My tongue would
Simulate graffiti artists
Who sprayed the air with
“nahmean”, “seen”, and “u get me”.
I painted my parents’ home red
With linguistic vibrancy
And grammatical errors.
But that voice didn’t brave the streets.

In Damascus I tried calligraphy,
Dipping my tongue into kohl-black ink
And streaking classical verse
Across the landscape.
In highfalutin lexicon
I asked for the mundane
- my cursive script a feather
in the ears of amused listeners.

I packed away Haringey
As a well-spoken child
And moved into Oxford
As a “pleb”.
Behind white teeth
My blushing tongue coiled
Hibernating,
But summer suns like
Marakechi charmers
Awoke the flushedsnake
And I began to dance words
Everywhere.

 

Aisha Phoenix
St Johns College