Poem by Rebecca Bird (UK)

Published in The Ofi Press issue 38.

Written in the Aubergine Dreams

When I changed my name and the toilet that I use,
the grazed street where we live became an aquarium.
We had been used to visitors, but then the kids came
tapping their fingers on the glass, asking their parents

how such creatures were made to stumbling umms.

Soon, the council gave me a placard with my name
and species. It said born in captivity though isn’t
that true of all of us? People would ask my handler

if I was mating, ask just what is going on down below
and if I attack when people venture near. A young man
threw stones. He told me, fucking ladyboy, you belong
back in the wild, when I was out buying bedsheets.

I heard some people got rid of their glass boxes,
leave them out with the recycling. Some fill them,
swim like Houdini, eyes brimming with bubbles.

I have left mine on, though it seems to magnify
all the dents in my head and the apple in my neck
how one day, a little while ago, someone opened

my life in the middle