Dad

We laugh when people pronounce chorizo wrong,
yet we cannot speak Spanish. We communicate
in lists of music and TV guides. There’s this rage inside us,
but we have passion, though sometimes we bubble over
like a pan of boiling water. We appreciate fine food,
and fine wine – flowing like the tears you soak up in your shirt,
my shoulder to cry on, and a best friend to make me laugh,
my dad, who fills my life with love.

My Father from a New Angle

He thought he was the emblem of success:
smart suit, cufflinks, expensive watch.

Not to mention the semi-detached house, sports car
and nuclear family. This kind of life was something worth aiming for.

And it’s not like the journey there was entirely smooth.
Raised by a single mother, with an anger in his belly unable to make it out his mouth.

He is not one to fit into the boxes, falling out of one private school to another,
he does not quite have the elocution of his mother

and on weekends he wears claret and blue,
sleeves tattooed, and TOWIE is the guilty pleasure

we watch together, but he watches the spinoffs on his own.

Carmina Masoliver is a London poet, founder of She Grrrowls and has been sharing her poetry on both the page and stage for over a decade. Her latest book ‘Circles’ is published by Burning Eye Books (2019). Her dad is a teacher, and also a secret poet and artist at heart.