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New Poem by Umit Singh Dhuga


 Childs Hill

Six months later out of the womb for eight
hours and you're gone. I'm sorry I was late
at Gatwick but I couldn't hit eject
... (our Starman days, they're gone, correct?)
and stop the jet's petrol-blasting taxi
nor advance in the queue for a taxi
with sincere words—"Please, my nephew is dead".
They don't believe me; after all, they've just read
in flight about who fucked who and whether
Rooney's bicycle kick came off his shin
or "he done laced it!" This isn't London
any more but a mobile with a tether
to every other sputtering machine. . .
The casket was painfully light at Golders Green.

London, May 2012

poem by Umit Singh Dhuga, Classics scholar with a PhD from Columbia.  He is the founder, publisher, and managing editor of The Battersea Review.  Ben Mazer is co-editor.
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