In Wait For That Hot Stink
It’s given me a muse
And in this strange country
I hear it calling me,
Feel its dog wet nose against my leg.
I’ve never seen you so angry,
Flushing the sky a mountainous grey
With your clear-phlegmed spit.
There is no skyline here
And I am transported
To when witch aunty, in her purple scarf,
Said she saw me in an actor’s face,
Said when I was born, she ‘dreamt so strangely
Of something like stars.’
How I mistook her wailing for love.
And in confusion birds perched upside down
Worms heaved upwards, upwards
And I walked on all fours.
For that night I slept with my window slightly ajar,
Frost crackling in the gaps of opening glass,
In wait for that hot stink –
‘Fill my pen with talent, ink!’
By Yazmin Sadik
Biography
Yazmin Sadik is a Turkish Cypriot, first-year English student at the University of Bristol. She enjoys reinterpreting and playing on her favourite art works and poems, exploring the themes they present to her in a more personal context. Sexual difference and conflict within one’s identity are also prominent themes which she finds interesting. Performing in a spoken word event in London, with her friends supporting her in the audience, marked a huge change in her attitude towards her own poetry.