NOTE: Each of the poems below draws upon the ‘fairy tale’ by H. C. Andersen listed next to it. The titles are from Andersen: Stories and Tales. Translated by H. W. Dulcken. London: Routledge, 2002. The translation was first published in 1865. Prayer: Thumbelina; The Soldier Home from Iraq: The Tinder Box; Immigrant: The Little Sea-maid (Also known as ‘The Little Mermaid’).

Prayer

Grant me a little child
I can hide
When the mullahs come home to pray,
When planes are birds of prey.

Someone
Smaller than my thumb
I can put in my pocket and run.

The Soldier Home from Iraq

What could I do being what I was:
Saviour of old women, their killer too.
On my chest there sat a big dog;
Trained to get answers, move it, jump jump jump,
I picked up my M16A2 and shot her.
There she lay. There they lay.

Back home I was rich like anyone else,
Princesses clutched my dog hairs
In fantasy, in ecstasy.
Later we slept.

I had my will
Until

The shades of a prison-house closed upon me
And I remembered I had forgotten
Something.
It eludes me still.
Was it a candle, a wick, a tinderbox?
Something to do with light surely.
Something that would have set me free.

Immigrant

It hurts to walk on new legs:
The curse of consonants, the wobble of vowels.

And you for whom I gave up a kingdom
Can never love that thing I was.

When you look into my past
You see
Only
Weeds and scales.

Once I had a voice.
Now I have legs.

Sometimes I wonder
Was it fair trade?