Check me out simmerin

cross the dance floor

5000 miles

—–away

——–to house music

 

Mommy    you really could have

picked up the phone

 

My smile won’t go

I slow down and

the world

—–returns only

slowly

Mama dead   just so

 

Can I speak to someone

——other than these

Erasmus girls shimmying

on the dance floor?

 

M o m m y you really could have

—–picked up the phone

 

I’m dancing

——–through the Facebook message

—–to house

—music

They’re asking me

Are you alright?

—-in Paris

—-dancing

 

Tommy     Mama dead

The Facebook message

—–in the K-Fêt    École

————————-Normale

—————————–Supérieure

 

I didn’t return home

to you waiting for me

——two months

——Mama

——travelling

 

and I

couldn’t afford the plane ticket

but

 

here    I am

dancing

in a café in Paris

École Normale Supérieure

—–these girls shimmying beside me

 

Mommy

you could have

picked up the phone

——not a Facebook message

I would have paid

 

 

∞

∞

Jason Allen-Paisant is a Jamaican-born, UK-based poet. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 2015 with a DPhil in Medieval and Modern Languages and joined the University of Leeds in 2016 as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and now serves as the Director of the Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. His debut poetry collection, Thinking with Trees, was published in June 2021 by Carcanet Press and named by The Irish Times as one of the Best Poetry Books of 2021.