Verona

Abstract

Verona Nick Makoha (bio) It was your day off when I came into the world.Until then you had no interest in dried leaves, or how a woman might use her hand as a scaleto pour raisins into a bowl or how water moves to the sea. What use was there in something so vast,something you had not seen with your own eyes? In any case you were never one for fishing,for waiting for life at the end of a line. After the nightshift you would park the Mazdaon the drive, rest the paper on the steering wheel, pen in one hand, beef sandwich in another.Seventeen across—nut roast cooked for high fliers (10). You would wait for the street sweeper to appear in your wing mirror.Listening to his broom comb the pavement as you held your sandwich like fruit flicking the radio to 99.8.Twelve down—Girl carries on in Juliet’s place (6). I don’t have this scene on tape but I know that I was six weeks lateand that the 12-inch cigar in your glove compartment was for me. Mama would never let you smoke in the car. The weather reportyou say was interrupted by a jackknifed lorry on the M6. No casualties except the driver the only other personyou knew who had broken his collar bone in three places. Hence the basketball in the back seatand mood swings that have no language. Don’t be afraid remember your wings—Seventeen down(10) Astronaut. And the name you gave me—Twelve down—Verona. The sun hung suspended between two houses when your heartbeatslowed and I became something new you could catch in both hands. [End Page 61] Nick Makoha Nick Makoha’s debut, Kingdom of Gravity (Peepal Tree Press), was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize and nominated by the Guardian as one of the best books of 2017. A Cave Canem graduate fellow and Complete Works alumnus, he won the 2015 Brunel Prize and 2016 Derricotte & Eady Prize for his pamphlet Resurrection Man. He was the 2019 Writer-in-Residence for The Wordsworth Trust and Wasafiri. His play The Dark, produced by Fuel theatre and directed by JMK Award–winner Roy Alexander, had a UK National tour in 2019. His poems appeared in the New York Times, Poetry Review, Rialto, Poetry London, TriQuarterly Review, Boston Review, Callaloo, and Wasafiri. Copyright © 2020 Middlebury College Publications