My name is Podrigotumma and when I read poetry one of the questions that's always in the

mind is, who is the eye? Who's speaking here? And often of course when you're reading a poem

you want to think, oh I'm being invited into the eye, I'm being invited into the experience

of the speaker and the outrage of the speaker. But often these days when I read poetry I

realise that I am not being invited into identifying with the eye, the speaker of the poem, I'm

being identified into being the you, the one who might be challenged, the one who's being

up for a critique.

Coconut Oil by Roshne Goyate

Vatika bottle sits in the bathroom, contents solidified by London's night, mom microwaves

a two-aclear sap, an ancestral ritual improvised. She sits me down, braids unplatted, drags

plastic comb through my hair, out, mommy, mommy, not too hard, pretends my squeaks are not

there. Drip, drip onto my invisible scalp, grab, grip with the palms of her hand, rub,

rub, rub, taming flyaways, slap, slip onto the slick dark of strands, a soft scent sweetened

with buttery, slippery, tinged with metallic sweat of my brow, provokes questions in the playground.

Why do you smell so funny? How? The powder-red shame of coconut oil spray paints

itself onto my skin. I deleted from life like a bad line of cold, no chance of it coming

in. When suddenly this hair oil that gave me such grief comes back for well-being's bright

new age, no longer smelling funny, a great white commodity marked up for organic food

shops, all the rage. I love this point for a whole variety of reasons. Possibly chief

among which are the last three words, all the rage. You know, there's the upfront meaning,

all the rage, meaning fashionable, or everybody's getting it in a new style of fashion.

Attached to a style of jeans, whatever. You know, it's all the rage. But in Roshne

...