After The Adoration of the Magi
This ramshackle hut I was born
had neither thatch, roof nor ceiling
A hovel with a hundred o holes, having
no walls nor windows, not even an exit.
Cows, horses, flies slept all within, barely
room for a time, Father built chimneys and
Mother had sweetbread and kidneys a boiling.
Winters were harsh. Hailing, piss-snow over us
while we from our foule bum-guts discharge.
Where was this house of ours? Where be we then?
legless, finger-boned, as paired ancient thieves
trying to send down roots, waiting for wheels
that never come, instead one day we agree
our hut is paradise we’ll never leave.
(previously unpublished)
Leo Boix lives in London and Deal (Kent). His work has been published in journals including The Rialto, Minor Literature [s], Morning Star; Ink, Sweat and Tears, and elsewhere. He was selected for The Complete Works III, and in 2016 won first prize for the Anglo-Chilean Society poetry competition. As an international journalist, his articles are regularly published in major Latin American journals and newspapers including Revista Proceso, Diario Perfil and El Telégrafo. His poems will feature in the next Carcanet New Poetries anthology as well as in Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe) later this year. He is currently poet in residence at St. Gabriel’s School, London.
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