Three Poems by L Kiew

Karwinski’s fleabane

Thank you for collecting me. I know now
I was uncultivated and
I wasn’t any good against fleas.
You forgave me,
called me dependable daisy,
let me soften edges, carpet stony ground.
Thank you for giving me a bed
in the rockery, the slivers of space.
You appreciated how I bloomed,
white-arrayed for most of the summer.

It seems I’ve outgrown your welcome,
no longer fitting the floral scheme,
spilling from understorey and
onto driveway, wrinkling roots
into the tiny gaps I discover.
I’ve heard you talking about me:
prolific self-seeder, easy
to kill and difficult to keep out.
You gouge clumps, scorch
earth and spray glyphosate.

I know you are busy. Thank you
for not committing enough
effort to root me out.
My petals uncurl. I’m settled
and my seedlings sprawl out.
I love seaside, small cracks.
I hate hard winters.
Pioneer of disturbed sites,
I remain grateful
for the wind, the part sun.

Father Replies by Letter from Foula

“First I start with little
tastes: a lick of salt,
a shot of aloe and milk-
thistle, a crab-apple,“
your handwriting sprawls,

“before strolling the dunes
down to the sea, a pencil
stub in my pocket, crumpled
paper and the broad day
in which to note nesting

birds among snagging gorse,
sunshine broiling and the scut
of a rabbit fleet down a hole,
scallop shells on the foreshore,
bladder wrack and driftwood.

Memory’s sodium chloride
clumping in flat flakes;
it drifts high against lampposts
and paint-chipped front doors
behind which the dachshunds bark.

So I haven’t forgotten you.”
I snuff the stiffened paper:
traces of seaweed, graphite
and ozone, residues of summers
spent eighteen years apart.

Postcards to an old address

I saw this and thought of you.
Do you remember the red caps,
searching under one for a face
that’d look like Shakespeare’s?

I think of you still peering
behind flower pots, at the back
of charity shops. I’m weeding
beds and borders for inspiration.

I saw this Major’s garden
ornament. He’s nearly all Bard,
full of supposition, conjecture.
Perhaps the writing is always hard.

You remember how we loved
that craze for travelling gnomes?
The Ann Atkin collection is
in storage. You could have stayed.

I saw this gardenalia today.
Didn’t you have one of these?
I keep the heart you gave me
in the old potting shed.

I thought of you and saw this.
Have you found what you were
looking for? Do remember
it’s cold outside. Keep well.

A Chinese-Malaysian living in London, L Kiew works as a charity sector leader and accountant. She holds an MSc in Creative Writing and Literary Studies from Edinburgh University. Her debut pamphlet The Unquiet was published by Offord Road Books in 2019. She was longlisted in the 2019 National Poetry Competition and was a 2019/2020 London Library Emerging Writer. L Kiew is currently working on her first collection.