This lithograph of four turtles – I’ve

carried it in my satchel for months, its corrugated edges

dig it into fingerpads as I search for

pens, lectures, tutorials, the thrust

of the treatise, dust from books

fifty years old masking synapses. I stroke their cool, smooth

shells, a wet nose against an indexed knuckle, a stringy tale taken

delicately between two fingers – secret comforts,

armour, amore.                Is this how we are:

armoured, encompassed, all four directions or

(mocked) soup for the nouveau riche: crystal,

Royal Doulton, Irish Linen?            and the door to our

boudoir left open, no room of our own –

a brother, an uncle, a sister, a grandmother snoring in

content      We withdraw, fold into ourselves no matter

how much

we long for violation, to be ravished by

a moon descending in the shape of a swan, in the tender flesh of

a Nairobi spring.      Is this what we

do? how we

interrogate any Fate that slips between the sheets with us,

awkward as a bicycle?      one more year scraped back

to the canvas, gouged retribution, coy

as a Regency virgin, tortoise shell comb confining

a rope of hair