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.