Playing Cards

 
Playing Cards
by Jo Clement
 
Granda Jack plays patience in his new flat,
his heart fixed on Kings, on returning

the deck to their suits: first ace cards, numbers,
then court. Across the ledge his carved elephants

parade trunk-to-tail, backlit by an Indian summer
brewing pink. Their meaning was lost on me, then,

like the door, always propped open by the pot plant
we bought to celebrate his moving in.

This game soon has him beat. He jumbles cards
back together, soughs. We go to the park,

key open sardines, headless silver flounders
in our oily fingers as we pinch them out.

This is the life, he says, pulling bones through his teeth.
I didn’t know I was born until he told me

what it meant to call a spade a spade or a Traveller
a pike. How a boy my age hid from the Reich,

bound hooves in hessian and hay to flit town
in the dead of night, wraithing cobbles to keep quiet

our bad blood. Or how we moved into white woods,
burnt fiddles to warm ribs, sang low in the slack tents

their boots stamped and upturned. Black triangles
needled to our chests like stars, badges of shame

that marked us work-shy Zigeuner.
The death camps devoured us. Tonight,

the shapes that keep me from sleep are square
and on paper, the kind I falter over:

Ethnic Origin, Please Tick One:
White □ or Gypsy □

‘Playing Cards‘
from Outlandish by Jo Clement
Reproduced with permission from Bloodaxe Books © Jo Clement

Jo Clement

Jo Clement teaches Creative Writing at Northumbria University.