Hot Pink by Ro Daniels (Lucent Dreaming Issue 11)

Due to limited control of our formatting on posts, the formatting of the following poem is incorrect.

There is a pink enamel paint stain on       my desk
                 on my grandma (rest her)’s desk

where i spilt
on purpose a whole tester
bottle of pink enamel paint
oh she would
be pissed off if she saw it
if she could see it
she would not be happy.

She would buy me things like
(my nan) to organise my shoes &
storage solutions &
knitting things
to knit my prospective kids like
shoes and hats
& these things would be pink or purple
but pink.
And she would hate if i called
her nan if she could hear it.

    It’s not her fault:

    she lived her whole life wearing pink in a pipesmoke room
uncrinkling pink dresses with a silver iron
    uncrinkling pink pills from silver fish fin foil
and cleaning with a wire brush my grandpa’s pink unders.

(& the stain is
    roughly in              silver

this shape.) fish fin foil & pink unders

Ro Daniels is a poet and graphic essayist, with a focus on conceptual work and transformations. They are working on their autobiography-in-graphics, Everything Body, and a chapbook, Empirical Science. They live in Sheffield and work shelving books in the university library.
@wifienabledcafe | @chocolatemammoth

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Lucent Dreaming is an independent creative writing magazine and book publisher for beautiful, imaginative and surreal fiction, poetry and artwork from emerging authors and artists worldwide. Subscribe to Lucent Dreaming now, support us on Patreon and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.