Kerri Shying The Sweet Potato Man

Sweet Po Man

Lay down lay down

held tight by dark clay shoulders

there is goodness in store

in my sweet potato man

who raised himself

questing for a foothold in the future

sliding through the soil with a hair’s breadth of root

as an elder seeks a memory

do you still recall the strangeness of the young man’s beard against your skin

at 15?

It was yesterday is all, a step away in memory

a smell a taste a touch.

Store them rammed down deep in sand alongside carrots, my nanna

store them in paper bags in the fridge, mum

store in hemp sacks in pantry’s dark, I tell myself

I don’t.

He’s in the cupboard growing aerials

transmitting a belief in my ability to be

more than a snuffling pig ,asking questions with her snout

“Ich Bin Ein Berliner “ said the President Kennedy, when I was  young

to express his love of hot dogs

我是一个红薯

(Wǒ shì yīgè hóngshǔ)

I am a sweet potato. 

I remind him, where he lies sliced,

purple iris in lazy ink surveilling, 

how I am to use him,

this time, 

now. 

Kerri Shying june 2016.