Push the Week
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Push the Week
(for W)
If I had cash, I could get some cassava gariDown Great Western Road, shop in Solly’sAnd make some sukuma wiki; stretch the week.But this card don’t buy me African foodOr let me shop in Marie Curie(although they have nice things in there.)Only in the Salvation Army Store.(Where the clothes are a bit of a bore.)You think just because you’re an asylum seekerYou don’t care what you wear?And from eating the wrong food, my stomach’s sore.If I didn’t just have this card to useI would buy some maize meal flour, avocado, yam.If my mother were here she would say:That woman is not my daughter.Even I don’t know who I am.If I had cash I could buy some corn pones,dried fish, beef … curried mung beans …Kachumbari, my God, how I wish!Expand the chest. My spirits would lift, eh?Not so worthless, not so angry.Ugali would make me less depressed!Not so homesick. Nyama choma.But the Home Office never considerHow it feels to be dispersed to Glasgow.No cash for cane row, no money for Makimo.No dosh for monthlies. No pounds for sweet potato.The week repeats. We are scattered families.Now it’s HIV. No TV. Just CCTV—watching me.Non-stop scrutiny. Anyone shouts Asylum SeekerBash them with your saucepan. Man stealer!(I have yet to see one to write home about!) Cassava!In your imagination, you have new friends to dinner.You picture a cooker. A table. You light a candle. [End Page 265] You shine some cutlery. You see your face in it.And you say Stick in till you stick oot, and you say,Help yourself. Go ahead. Have some chapati, mbazi, gari.Here’s what we eat in my country. You see. [End Page 266]
Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University, was born and brought up in Scotland. The Adoption Papers, her first book of poems, won the Forward Prize, a Saltire prize, and a Scottish Arts Council Prize. Fiere, her most recent collection of poems, was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. Her novel Trumpet won The Guardian Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the IMPAC award. Red Dust Road: An Autobiographical Journey won the Scottish Book of the Year Award and the London Book Award. In 2006, she was awarded an MBE, and in 2002 she was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her book of stories Wish I Were Here won the Decibel British Book Award. Her most recent book is Reality, Reality, a collection of short stories. She is also the author of plays and books for children.
