Jen Feroze

by Jen Feroze

Paul has overheard that it’s my birthday.
He brings us breakfast on the verandah,
dewy and humid. At the centre of my plate
is a passionfruit, big as a tennis ball
and split open. It’s like
looking into two dark gold ponds,
clogged with frogspawn that snaps
between the teeth.

He’s made doughy pancakes too, sticky
with berries and honey. As your fingers
make lazy circles on my thigh under the table,
Paul is calling to his sunbirds.
Pipettes of sugar syrup for the littlest ones.
His whistling polished by decades
of mornings like this.
Thin brown arms steady, chin lifted
and song carrying over the fruit trees and ferns;
hot rain and bird calls
and the electric hiss of mosquitoes.
We are so far away from our lives.

Jen Feroze is a UK poet living by the sea. Her work has appeared in journals including Magma, Under the Radar, Butcher’s Dog, Chestnut Review, Okay Donkey, One Art, Stanchion, Poetry Wales, Berlin Lit and Black Iris. She won the 2024 Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition and placed second in the 2022/2023 Magma Editors’ Prize. Jen has edited anthologies for Black Bough Poetry and The Mum Poem Press, and her pamphlet Tiny Bright Thorns was published by Nine Pens.

by Jen Feroze

My daughter asks for the moon
for her birthday.

In the stark October dusk
she holds her hands to the sky

says it must be lonely up there,
wonders if the stars are friendly.

Owl noon finds me on the edge of the pond,
swings gossiping rust behind me.

The long pole is quickly slippery with weed
and failure but then she bites,

cradled like a soft-boiled egg
on this horseshoe spoon. I tie the ribbon

gently and will myself not to think
of the word ‘noose’. Together we walk home,

this awesome balloon and I, interfering
with the dreams of each house we pass.

I leave her bobbing softly on the ceiling,
glowing like a grieving mother.

Jen Feroze (she/her) is a UK poet living by the sea with her husband and young children. Her work has been widely published, and has recently appeared in Poetry Wales, The Chestnut Review, Spelt, Hyacinth Review and The Orchards Poetry Journal, among others. She loves cold water swimming, turquoise things and chunky knitwear. Find her on twitter @jenlareine and on instagram @the_colourofhope.