4 AM in the Morning

I saw my dad was on my mom
and my mom said
Go to the office.

My dad was hitting her
and when my dad left
he took my phone.

His friend
was blocking the stairs.
His friend’s name is James

and my dad kicked my mom
and he told me
to go in my room.

But I went to go get
my mom’s friend
who lives in our back house.

My dad knocked on my door
to the patio and I opened it
and he came in

and told me
to close the door
to the family room.

Then I heard yelling
and I came out
and my dad was hitting my mom.

It happened
at 4 am
in the morning.



An excerpt from a police report generated by boxer Floyd Mayweather’s young son, Karoun on 9 September 2010. Submitted by Richard King Perkins II.

Doing your duty!

I’m a patriotic husband,
you my patriotic wife,
lemme book into ya camp
and manufacture life.

Only financially secure adults
in stable, committed, long-term
relationships should participate.



A song encouraging Singaporeans to have more babies, reported in Baby Love, The Economist, 25 July 2015. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.

My mother would still like to know

what happened to the set
of yellow clip on bows
she bought for my hair
when I was about six. 



She put them in a safe place
ready to use
when I went to a birthday party later the same week
and thirty two years later they are still missing. 



Yet every now and again
she still wonders about them
and does this wistful gaze at my hair, and I know
she's imagining me wearing them now.



Taken from a post by user SarahandFuck on Mumsnet chat forum, July 2013. Submitted by Uschi Gatward.

The Heart Doctor

I enjoy my life
I enjoy my children now
particularly they’re grown up and
not squawking
I love being with them all
perhaps not at the same time

I’m fairly hopeless grandmother
I like them when they grow up
You don’t leave small children with me!
I’d always got, as my oldest son said, ‘staff’
someone who looked after their nonsenses

I don’t like this repetitive
‘Please do this’
‘Please don’t be rude’
I can’t be dealing with all that!
Actually I tell them
I like the dog best



Transcribed from an interview with Jane Somerville, cardiologist, on Desert Island Discs, Friday 12th July 2013. Submitted by Grace Andreacchi.

Skint

Emma
I want better for Tai
I want just a normal life
Just where I can get up in the morning
Get Tai off to school or whatever
Get about my housework
Do you know what I mean?

Do things with Tai at the weekend
Save up for holidays
Do you know what I mean?

I want it to be where eventually
I’m off the methadone and everything
Maybe even go back to college
Do a counsellors course
I’ll get a little office job or summat

Just normal
Do you know what I mean?

Gail
My partner died
He was thirty-seven years old when he died
To see him come off heroin
get his life sorted out
and then to go on drink
and then to die
through drink
it’s hard
It’s really hard

Life throws some things at you sometimes,
don’t it?
And you’ve just got to get on with it
You’ve got to be strong
And if you’re not strong,
and you’re weak
you fall apart,
don’t you?

Skye
Yeah, but it’s because I can
because I can do it
and I wanna do it
I can
so I don’t give a fuck
Do you know what I mean?

Do you know what, yeah?
that’s sticking up for your mates that
She’d booted her in the stomach
and winded her
so I just went over
I was just like
Boom

Dropped her
Banged her
Fucked her up
Stamped on her head
and everything

Tracey
Since I’ve lost me kids
I don’t care anymore
What else have I go to lose
apart from my head?
I regret the prostitution
and not fighting a bit harder
for me kids
but you can’t turn the clock back,
can you?
If you could,
we’d all have perfect lives,
wouldn’t we?



Taken from episode 4 of the Channel 4 series Skint. Submitted by Lisa Oliver.

Kinship and Community

Him

In our turning we do this, that or the other. I’ve lived in this turning for fifty years,
and here I intend to stay. They’re new here they’ve only been here eighteen years.

I’ve got friends at work and friends at sport and friends I have a drink with. I know
all the people around here, and I’m not invited into anyone else’s home either.

It doesn’t seem right somehow. Your home’s your own.

They’re all related in this street. It’s awful, you can’t talk to anyone in the street about any of the others,
but you find it’s a relative. You have to be very careful.

Her

It’s friendly here. You can’t hardly ever go out without meeting someone you know. Often it’s someone you were at school with.

Since we’ve had the children I’ve got no more friends – outside the family I mean.
I don’t see my best friend much. She’s married too, and she’s always round

her Mum’s like I’m always round mine. Since we’ve had the baby, I’ve got no men friends – outside the family, that is.



Direct quotes from the research commentary in Family and Kinship in East London, by Michael Young and Peter Willmott (Pelican Books, 1957). Submitted by Peter Raynard.

Before the end came

Death is so intimate –
more intimate than first love.

I could hold his hand, 

gaze into his eyes, 

stare 

unhindered 

at his tender face, 

stroke 

his frosty hair.

He was very thin,
skin the colour 

of a dried corn husk. 


His mouth 

a dark tunnel. 

The jagged mountain ranges 

of his ruined teeth.


The petrified forests
of his hair.

The failing locomotive of his breath.
The sadness of the black bobbled socks on his calves.

Yet he was
irreducibly
who he had always been. 




Taken from Tim Lott's Guardian article, My father's final moments, 23 February 2013. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

Paired birds of Franciscan brown

If Brother Julian was gardening in front of the friary,
Brother Adrian weeded in the back.
If Adrian was driving the van, Julian sat by his side.
Preparing the altar for chapel,
chopping wood for kindling,
exulting in ice cream at the Twist & Shake:
the twins were together, always.

Workers, not teachers, so ever-present as to be unseen.
Taken for granted, like the rushing hush
of the Allegheny River at the university’s edge,
or the back-and-forth of birdsong.

Brother Julian became the sacristan,
Brother Adrian the chauffeur,
but they also built the bookshelves,
maintained the garden, cleared the shrines in the woods
and rarely spoke unless invited.

How they adorned the friary trees with birdhouses.
How they toured the campus on identical bicycles.
How they often sat in prayer in the chapel,
so still that you might not know they were there.



Taken from a New York Times article about twin Franciscan brothers. Submitted by Angi Holden.

The Clan

Malcolm was dreadful
John was quite damaged
Malcolm and Kitty were part of the Fabian set
like Bloomsbury in sexual licence
but with more socialism and less art


Taken from an email discussing the Muggeridge family. Some punctuation omitted. Submitted by Grace Andreacchi.

The Name of the Father

The first time I came home
with a hangover - I was 21
or 22 - I was in the kitchen
making a cup of tea. In those days
all I drank was Guinness - my dad
leant over to me and said:
'Do you drink spirits?' I said:
'No, I don't.' He said:
'Don't.' That's stayed with me
all my life. I don't drink spirits
at all. It was profound because
my father was a man of
very few words but,
when he did speak,
it was emphatic.



Taken from an interview with Liam Neeson in the Metro, 27th January 2012. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Papa Don't Shoot

"Papa rushed into the room”
Rola El-Halabi
told the newspaper. "He threatened us with
a gun in his hand and shouted
‘Everyone out!’ And then he shot me
in the hand from three meters.
I cried and screamed."

Bild reported that El-Halabi split
from her stepfather as a manager
in January. “When I had problems
I could talk with him about anything,
except when it was about boys,”
El-Halabi said.
“That was taboo.”



Taken from a news story on April 3, 2011 about a female boxer in Germany, shot in the hand by her stepfather before a bout. Submitted by Marika Rose.

If this is love

Back when I was five, I used to stick yellow Hula
Hoops on my fingers and pretend to be engaged. Tiny
hands all salty, our big maroon-grey rescue Mastiff
– a girl, like me – licked them clean. Bundled in duffel
coats and balaclavas we’d meet Dad at Seal Sands
after work, watch the black-footed Little Stints wade
in the froth by the pipeline.

Dad had a stroke in the year that Lady had her first
litter. The nurse taught me to inject Lovenox (“if this is
love,” we’d grimace) straight into his stomach. He
was so angry, that’s what kept him with us so long.

But last year, we threw Dad’s ashes on the Estuary,
and skimmed stones after him.

I love walking by water, talking to him.

In pink jeans, walking Lady’s daughter (all grey now)
by the chilly inlet off Scotts Road, I catch a sapphire
sparkle – steel hoops and a furled wire net – “Planet’s
Biggest Public Art Project”, the Gazette said. Far
across the water, in silhouette, one giant loop is a
half-inch circlet. My ring finger fits right inside it.



Gallery texts written to accompany an exhibition by Annie O'Donnell, taken from a conversation with Becky Hunter. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Three words

I've got seven
kids. The three
words you hear
most around my
house are 'hello',
'goodbye' and
'I'm pregnant.'



Dean Martin, as quoted in the Guardian Family section, 7th August 2010. Line arrangements are original. By Marika Rose.