poetry pRO     Michael Curtis
True Compass?, Contemporary Literature Press

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featured poet – Hylda Sims (1932-2020)

Down Choumert Road

there’s daffs, a quid three bunches
new season’s spuds, thirty pence a pound
six limes fifty pence. fresh crimson chillies
capers, cardamoms, cumin, puzzles of ginger
eddoes, mangoes, melons, ackie, chow chow
pale dimpled breadfruit, manioc rough as bark
 
fans of skate on marble, shark fin, turbot
huss, bass, goat-fish, ink-fish in a bucket,
Goes well with custard, want some parsley with it?
His rubbers slub a nifty riff, Here George,
he scuds a mullet; rhythm’s pummelling on
from Blue Beat City – Rap and Ragga, Reggae
Hip-Hop, Ska; Not like the old days
is it, Mrs Lady? He winks, you won’t remember,
cabbage, cod on Friday, forever Crosby
crooning Easter Bonnet on the wireless.
 

Hylda Sims

in collection, Reaching Peckham, narrative sequence, 1996;
in anthology What Poets Eat, ed. Judi Benson, 1994, Foolscap;
performed on BBC’s ‘The Food Programme’

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