Her Da's hip

Abstract

Her Da's hip Carol Jenkins (bio) As the White Rabbit tour group condenses undera rice paper cloud, lamp soot black, smog belch big,raining string—embossed with Beijing's grey bricks, she—no more than four is lifted up on her Da's hip,close enough to twiddle his left ear—a testing caress.She turns her tiny hand to her own lobe, then carefully aligns her ear against her Da'sand holding both pinnae together, listening perhapsshe twiddles both, a double happiness. Her father takes it all in, the talk of rice paper and Beijing'stwo million cars that make grey clouds and grey sky,the twinned twiddling, without a flinch. Later he walks away and puts her down,she skips off, her knees springing up as if gravitywas for her, at best, intermittent. [End Page 137] Carol Jenkins Carol Jenkins's most recent publication, A Crooked Stile, was published by Puncher & Wattmann, which also published her previous two collections, Fishing in the Devonian and Xn, both shortlisted for Premier's Prizes. With the photographer Ingrid Periz, she published the fabulist Select Episodes from the Mr Farmhand Series in 2013. Copyright © 2021 Wayne State University Press