Johanna Aitchison

Miss Red in Japan

I make telephone calls
to my bones, eat evenings
full of 12–year–old
video credits.

Crows snap black
on power lines, shine
beaks inside my leaf window.

My childhood home
is coffee cans, a frying pan
on the living room floor.

Mum is a Moritz stick.
The stove is a piece of dried seaweed.

At night I cover mother
in a yellow plastic hard hat.
‘Goodnight dad,’ I call out.

The road is dancing.
In the dark I salute
packets of HOPE
cigarettes inside
spacelight
roadside machines.