The fingers and thumb on his left hand
are up as high as his arm will let them.
His right forefinger joins them.
One and five make six, he says,
for the first time since his muscles were
given blood and his teeth discovered
they can do more than eat.
Well done, I say.
What does well done mean? he says.
I look at the hairs that have grown
out of the crown on his head,
the way they lift and bend and fall
like waves, how his eyes know
to blink when the sun gets in,
the way his skin wears the world
like a reflection.
It means good job, he interupts.
Like how one and five make six.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The shark is in a plastic wine glass
being held over the deep end of a swimming pool.
The show is about to start.
The shark knows what to do:
let its body fall when tipped towards the water,
sink to the bottom, wait, forget it has fins
strong enough to swim away and be forgotten,
wait, wait for a seven-year-old smile
to dive in with goggles, hold it in his hands,
lift it up into the sun and rescue it
in a way he doesn’t understand.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

You think the sky
outside the plane window
is the floor. Who am I
to stop you dancing
on that thought?

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The turtle
Is minding its own business.
Light finds its
Way through the
Sea and
I feel my shell softening.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

He’s at the corner of Kas Market on a Friday
selling sweetness and aggression,
juice and nails, snacks and work.
In our year 4 play at school I was cast
as one of three wine makers. An enthusiastic
teacher painted our feet and ankles purple
and we marched them up and down like hammers
on stage. Parents laughed at our fumbled
French accents as we sang a song about vineyards
we’d rehearsed for months. Back at Kas Market
the grapes of the stall owners eyes hang softly
in a face of hammers, his fingers exhausted
from an early morning of setting up his table,
organising his wares, writing his sign
in perfect English.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Her t-shirt is a smile
from an auntie or friend,
she can’t remember exactly who
because her hair is biscuit crumbs
and the skin of her face is Fruit Shoot.
A member of staff in the cafe asks her
if she ordered four cheese toasties
and she says, Probably.
The boys are by the front door
licking the window shouting,
GIANT SEE-THROUGH LOLLIPOP.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Today, it was Christmas. My brother sat on the living room floor in the space between lunch and everyone nodding off on the sofa trying to solve this year’s brain teaser puzzle from my auntie – a selection of wooden shapes that need putting together in a particular order to make a perfect cube. His legs stayed crossed and rejected cheese and crackers until they felt like they deserved it. I watched from an armchair with a tub of ready salted Pringles. He’ll always only ever be five years older than me, but today, below his orange paper crown, he wore the body of an ancient warrior – posture perfection, deathly motivation, armoured determination, tongue-stuck-out-unceremoniously-across-half-of-his-face-concentration.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Today I dipped a round slice of cucumber
into a spoonful of French mustard.
While moving it from plate to mouth
the mustard flicked into my open eye.
We all laughed at the table because
it was the 90s and we were children
and my pain was sudden and hilarious.
There will be a lad on the school bus
in a few years who will drop his lunch
on the floor and we will all laugh
because his pain will be sudden
and hilarious. I will get a phone call
one afternoon and the sky will look
like the night. Sudden.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

You never know what you will do
when teenage motorbike thieves
swing a crowbar at you. I will step
into the pub, watch the owner climb
off the floor, hear the 2.50pm train pull
into the station, smell
the reduced strawberries from the green
grocers, feel the kerb become
my ankle, taste a community charge
the streets, feel the two wheels buckle
under the weight of desperate boys.

© Carl Burkitt 2023