On Heraldry
Heraldry
My neighbour is a man of flags—so far
I’ve counted six allegiances.
A range of Royal standards
& the red cross of St George
then this week he hoisted
tribute to the memory of the fallen―
a silhouetted regiment
beneath a single poppy
with some cheerful poppy
stickers in the window.
My favourite has a scarlet stripe
ablaze on new-night blue,
which I’ve googled
but to no conclusive end.
I would ask him what it stands for but
I’m not convinced he likes me―
the Monday I arrived he stood
inside his garden’s boundary
& shook his head in
seeming disapproval.
He makes me think of anxious
birds, the man at 27, braced
with song & feather for attack.
Or a bullfrog in a puddle croaking
‘Mine’ in bullfrog language, waiting
on a kiss to bring him back.
―
I wrote this poem in November 2020, three months in to what would become a year in Ilfracombe, where I was based after spending seven months in Southeast Africa.
Not ready to be back in the well-known world of Bristol, or able to afford to live alone there, something I felt I needed to do so I could process the impact of my trip, I decided to move to the coast.
The nearest beach was a few minutes walk from my affordable one-bedroom flat, which I signed up to rent without ever having seen it in real life. The flat was unfurnished, not even white goods, but I managed to source all the things I needed for around £100 (thank you, Gumtree). And found a man with a van who was willing to drive me from Bristol to Devon.
Two men, actually. Cousins at that. One white, one mixed like me. When we got to the flat and they helped unload my stuff, I saw a neighbour look at us, then at the floor, and shake his head. On the one hand, I can’t prove why he did that. On the other, I am very sure I know.
Back then, as with this summer, we’d had the Euros, and England flags were flying as part of that. But it was clear from the racist abuse that England’s Black players were forced to endure for the anti-racist stance of taking the knee (and for missing penalties), that the national pride cited by some didn’t extend to certain nationals.
One day during the championship, I heard my ostensibly friendly next-door neighbour (not the one who shook his head, he lived across the street) talking to his friend about the football. While I can’t quote this friend verbatim, I believe he said the N-word. Something along the lines of, The team is doing well, but it’s a shame about these n***ers.
As my stomach flipped I also doubted what I’d heard, instantly second guessing myself, failing to trust my own senses. Though the day was hot, I closed the window and they noticed. And then they lowered their voices, which was even more unnerving; that lowered voice of England has been droning on for years. And now it is increasingly emboldened.
I’ll leave you with another poem written at that time, when dogs kept barking at me, which was odd, because I like them. Lockdown was a strange and stressful time and I was lonely which is, I suppose, a form of fear. So perhaps those dogs could smell that. Or perhaps they took their cue from something else.
The Eye That Marks the Threshold
In this Small British Seaside Town
dogs bark at me a lot. I walk along the cliff
tops to relieve my hermitude & they mark me
in their sights as if my silhouette were prey.
Growl & crouch as low as working soldiers.
Is it the shape of my hair/ my skin,
tacitly triggering the leash? The Black fact
of my beigeness drapes each new encounter here.
& the garage sells its Daily Mails by noon.
The lintels of the houses have surveillance
cameras pointed at the thresholds
for some menace that’s imagined, never comes.
How terrified, this Whiteness. How brittle &
unbalanced on its fallacy of fineness.