The Friday Poem

A poem every Friday

In the Slips

Poets have always responded to war by writing poetry — it’s what we do. Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24th February this year people started sending The Friday Poem their poems about the war — poems about resistance, poems of protest, and poems about specific individuals affected by the fighting. These are stories of courage, grief and hope. We decided to publish some every week as Friday Poems for Ukraine. Here’s ‘In the Slips’ by Pratibha Castle. Slava Ukraini!

In the Slips

While the world watches 
Violetta, clad in years
the measure of a week,
journeys from Odessa 
with her doll and cat 

and a Grandmother 
her face a crumpled map 
of lifetime drills 
framed by a scarf 
the colour of losing
urges a boy soldier 
put this flower in your pocket

hopes his flesh 
rotted into trampled mud
bone and blood
transmuted to 
a claggy womb 
will birth a crop 
of smiling sunflowers

and men in black 
as if spectators 
at a cricket match 
watch a tank 
grizzle over cobblestones
across the city square 
while a man
sprints into its path  
scoops up a hand- grenade 
underarms it 
at a pile of rubble
the dog-end 
dangling from his lip 
a red-eyed fuse

Pratibha Castle’s award-winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds and A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press) was published in February 2022. Irish born, resident in W. Sussex, she studied creative writing as a mature student at University of Chichester in 2009. She appears in Agenda, HU, Blue Nib, OHC and London Grip, amongst others. Highly commended and long-listed in competitions including The Bridport Poetry Prize, Welsh Poetry Competition, Gloucestershire Poetry Society Competition, Brian Dempsey Memorial Competition, Sentinel Literary Journal Competition, she is also anthologised. A regular reader at The Poetry Place, she featured on Home Stage: Meet the Poet.

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