Push Your Palette (After Enua Ellams’ ‘Reminisce of Tongues’)

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An Israeli fighter-jet-bombed body/ laced a customer’s mocha with confetti-like human-debris / in a café in Gaza / and a foodie’s cappuccino / was served with droplets of blood / instead of chocolate sprinkles / push your palette / read the menu in an upmarket eatery on my High Street / but my son puked when he tasted my sister’s Cayenne Pepper Jollof Rice /

I was a foodie not a culinary-vampire / the flamingos on the Attenborough documentary warned me / we were born white and grey but turned pink from our diet / but the taste for killing grows on you like the stubborn genetic chin hairs mum and I developed in perimenopause / the first time I killed / a fly / my son’s tears filled his personalized mug / we recited psalms / buried fly remains under mangled grass beds that once broke a gardener’s secateurs / a Religious Education teacher said Abraham not me was anointed by God / and he said Yes I’ll kill my son on an altar /

didn’t killing a thing bring blood’s sweet taste into my mouth / in the form of fly haemolymph? / I picked a molar with a fingernail after forgetting to disinfect the hands / I cradled the fly-carcass with / when my son again said / Mum there’s a fly on my TV screen / I’d gathered random things to annihilate a living thing / I was an oscillating fighter jet spraying pyrethroids and pyrethrins / and a mum-of-a-sobbing-son watching centrifugal force separate gases from fly-carcass /

first I’d binge-watched a BBC documentary / Abraham’s clan kissed a holy wall / chanted sweet Sacramentos / then assembled all things to annihilate a living thing / so I became a blood-loving-junkie / cheering on their fighter jets on the TV / Go on fly over and flipping spray-bomb mama Hamdi al-Najjar’s nine kids to smithereens / in the fasting month of Ramadan / spare her son your uncle’s namesake Adam / he’ll preserve the juicy bloodline for black pudding / because mates / once you’ve tasted blood / you’ll be gagging for it /

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