Poem of the week : Mother’s

Mother’s

I am imagining again,
her story
of resin and cassava,
thin blood,

and flight.

It is mine, too,
like mirrors
inherited only
from mother, to mother,

to daughter—
eventually.

That smaller
tether
in every cell,
a helix of hushes,

sweet, tart
grapes on the vine.

All of the firsts
accruing in a body,

one voice
splitting into its Februarys

and its silences—

first dab of oil,
first whole nutmeg,
first unknotting
of adolescent hair—

first heartache,
its spectrogram passed
down,

whale song

from chest to chest,
an echo slickened
with rain and salt
and habit.

 

 

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in the UK. She is the 2020 winner of the esteemed Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Currently, she is a postdoctoral Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Liverpool, where she is working with the Ledbury Poetry Critics programme. Previously, she received an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where she studied poetry written by second-generation immigrants.