Happy Birthday Moon
by Raymond Antrobus
Dad reads aloud. I follow his finger across the page.
Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.
He makes the Moon say something new every night
to his deaf son who slurs his speech.
Sometimes his finger moves past words, tracing white space.
Tonight he gives the Moon my name, but I can’t say it,
his deaf son who slurs his speech.
Dad taps the page, says, try again.
Tonight he gives the Moon my name, but I can’t say it.
I say Rain-nan Akabok. He laughs.
Dad taps the page, says, try again,
but I like making him laugh. I say my mistake again.
I say Rain-nan Akabok. He laughs,
says, Raymond you’re something else.
I like making him laugh. I say my mistake again.
Rain-nan Akabok. What else will help us?
He says, Raymond you’re something else.
I’d like to be the Moon, the bear, even the rain.
Rain-nan Akabok, what else will help us
hear each other, really hear each other?
I’d like to be the Moon, the bear, even the rain.
Dad makes the Moon say something new every night
and we hear each other, really hear each other.
As Dad reads aloud, I follow his finger across the page.
From The Perseverance. Reproduced with kind permission of Penned in the Margins.
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Shortlisted for Best First Collection 2019
The Perseverance
Raymond Antrobus
About Raymond Antrobus
Raymond Antrobus (b. 1986, London) has been writing poetry for as long as he can remember. ‘I had permission to engage with it without the baggage that many people in the UK have, where poetry is solely associated with some negative experiences in English lessons at school’, he writes. ‘I associate it with family and songs and solitude.’
Antrobus is a freelance teacher, and one of the first six graduates of Goldsmiths’ MA in Spoken Word Education, as well as one of the inaugural Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellows, and the first Poet in Residence at the London Book Fair. His advice for younger poets is to be bold in their dislikes: ‘There is no holy grail of poetry, no matter what a school curriculum or University reading list tells you. Trust the things you connect with and grow from there.’
