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HANNAH LOWE
Ink
Tor’s off to The Night of the Senses’ annual ball to
collect her award.
We
buy a sailor’s hat, a corset, seamed white fishnets
from a market stall in Elephant.
I
read that Columbians write messages of love on money.
Gordis, my love has no price, Memo.
The central bank
has launched a TV campaign to wean them off the habit.
Seems that everyone at lunch is pregnant again. I paint
my
life in lurid detail. Let them sip lemonade
and see what they’re missing.
Siobhan talks about taking off . At Brechon Bouton,
it’s Paris.
In
El Rincon, it’s Peru or Chile. I know what I’m brave
enough for
and its not that but I can eat steak so rare it’s blue.
In
Iran, tampering with bank notes is a crime. Students wrote
“Death to Dictator” on hundred Rial notes, defaced
the Shah with spectacles and moles
which reminds me of Lenny, driving his cab in LA.
He
left Tehran in a car boot, hasn’t seen his family in fifteen
years.
Chicago gave him asthma but Venice Beach was A-OK.
I
write his story in my notebook, which these days
is
what I do. A photo arrives in the post of my dad
on
a roof in Notting Hill. He’s holding a baby
who isn’t me. At sixteen he left Jamaica, played poker
for his passage, worked the beetroot farms in Texas,
past through Manor Park, E14. Some people never stop
moving.
Tor gets in at 6. I’ve been up all night too. There’s a
tattoo
on
her shoulder, cupid pulling on his bow. On her bicep,
a
dollar sign. I lick my thumb and rub it. She laughs when it
smudges.
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