Jackie Kay Poems

Nothing can be hidden from Lochaline Stores,
Supposing the Grocer's has eyes and ears:
Not an addiction to scratch cards or whisky,
Not a partiality to a bottle of Chianti.
...

Let's blether about doors.
Revolving doors and sliding doors;

Half-opened, half-closed:
The door with your name on it,
...

I am only nineteen
My whole life is changing

Tonight I see her
Shuttered eyes in my dreams
...

I always looked out at the world,
And wondered if the world looked back at me,
Standing on the edge of something,
On my face- the wind from the cold sea.
...

The living room remembers Gran dancing to Count Basie.
The kitchen can still hear my aunts fighting on Christmas day.
The hall is worried about the loose banister.
The small room is troubled by the missing hamster.
...

No one makes soup like my Grandpa's,
with its diced carrots the perfect size
and its diced potatoes the perfect size
and its wee soft bits -
...

How strange the way old lovers move into the present,
tense, and catch you off guard; you tell me
when you were here last you'd taken the steam train to a place
whose name you've forgotten, and found a tapas bar.
...

1
She is on the second floor of a tenement.
From her front room window you see the cemetery.
...

Dark, the days when the ships came slowly in,
Carrying the baggage from the old past,
Old love letters, promises long since past.
...

You're a gem, you're a holy cairn
You're a clattering shaw
You're a Tongland Bridge
...