Winter in Prussia
after Bhanu Kapil
my grandmother
carries
forgotten German
in her body
in her pottery
on the sideboard
in her lips
that quaver
before they speak
words packed
in sawdust
for the crossing
my grandmother
carries the memory
of German
in apple slices
dipped in slopes
of white sugar
forgotten languages
hail from
my grandmother’s feet
in tap shoes
tied with black ribbons
umlauts
are beauty spots
marked on the scarp
of a cheekbone
my grandmother
carries a memory
of ice breaking upriver
that has nothing
to do with
the Thames
Jetsam
The waters are rising My grandmother washes
at the kitchen sink, hinging at the waist
That acid-green is not bladderwrack
but a flash of the fallen streetlamp guarding her gate
She strings a wash flannel between her tea cups
A city knows how to stick and flow in the veins
The pavements are submerged The flood eases through
her ill-fitting sash windows As the rose-patterned carpet lifts
we grip hands and wade My grandmother loses
a court shoe on the current and that is not all her hair
streams behind her We jettison belongings
not thinking where everything will wash up
This morning her hair is rusted oak leaves in the river
Daphne
Her hair is sunlight scooped into a pony tail
I follow its metronome of light as she leaps
the roots of river oaks I never imagined
I’d birth a girl so blonde, cobweb-slight
As she wades into the water, blade-
shelled oysters bury themselves deeper
in mud to honour her uncut feet
I worry, of course I worry,
that the river is too murky
and raw
but she finds a ladder
of winter sun
and swims away
gasping
I am cold
I am cold
I love it
I love it
Anna Kisby is a poet, archivist and author of the pamphlet All the Naked Daughters (Against the Grain Press, 2017). She won the Binsted Arts prize 2019, BBC Proms Poetry competition 2016, and was commended in Faber’s New Poets scheme. Her poetry appears widely in magazines, including Magma, Under the Radar, Mslexia, and anthologies including The Forward Book of Poetry. She's recently worked as a researcher in Creative History at Bristol University, co-written a play about historical magical practitioners, and tutored a course on writing from historical sources for Poetry School, UK. Her current project is a poetry-memoir about Jewish Prussian immigrants to London. Originally from London, she now lives in rural south-west England.
