---

ANN KAMAU

---

The Rusty Toque | Issue 13 | Poetry | November 30, 2017

---

Forever Ago (Why I Never Learned How to Swim)

Do you see that?
Mama told me the seas were made
to swallow the weeping of the sky
the only time
that grief
could be predicted
by man.
 
Once
we were good at
sunny days
but-
there-
                  do you hear that?
she shivers
atop the scale
knees and ribs and teeth
knocking together
sta-
     ca-
           tto
funeral gongs
as those clad in white shuffle in
to learn what graveyards look like
in Ward 17.
 
Seventeen, yes, seventeen was
such a tease
who asked me      did you taste that?
and then let me taste her love on my tongue
properly
before losing her recipe
in a furnace.
 
So I lost my directions
to ward 17.
I already knew what graveyards looked like.
 
She had never known
how to be whole
pieces littered all over town
some entombed in that brown
casket
others clutched in my hand
as I sink
and let the seas do
what they were made for.​

Swingin'

The leaves jangled,
swaggerin’ up streets
as car horns
clanged and the
wind chimed in.
 
The baby waited
in the flat,
diaper swelled up,
sour, stale milk
on the tongue.
 
It wasn’t quite
milk but ash,
remains after the
bomb went off
and the door
was left swingin’.

ANN KAMAU is in her final year of the Honours Business Administration program at Ivey Business School. She has three publications in the Spring 2016 issue of Symposium and hopes to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing. She lives in Mississauga, Ontario.