Night Shift
By Violet Smart
Winner, ‘Written Word’ Category
She has a favourite seat –
Top deck at the front,
Where the curve of the dirt-red frame
Cradles her body, still
Heavy with the scent of sleep.
There, she can watch
The world as it unfurls:
Thin whisps of life in
The headlights.
Her head pressed up against the glass, she listens
To cumbia from home,
And dreams of the nights
Danced into oblivion under the stars:
Now that her life is nocturnal,
All her dreams are waking.
She thinks that she hears
A voice from another time;
A voice that has homed in her
Heart, asking whether
She wants to bailar,
But as her body sways with
The swerving of the bus,
She catches sight of the voice’s vessel
And notices that it too sits on the
Ends of an apron, like a bird with clipped wings.
She yawns beneath her mask and
Wills herself to stay awake as they
Stutter towards her stop,
But the closer they get, the more voices she can hear
From home and when someone says
Vuelvo ahorita, she thinks she can feel
Her mother inside of her, like a child.
She remembers the pregnant nights of
Waiting, when in some other city
Her mother did what she does now.
Someone else says te quiero
And the words knot themselves –
Love, like her lanyard, something she has
Carried around her neck for years.
Duermate ya, she hears, and she is sure
She is already dreaming.
Where do they come from -
All of these voices that speak in
The language of her tongue?
When she turns to press STOP,
The seats behind her have filled.
Brown faces with phones pressed
To their ears – people in song
Before even the birds:
In Mexico it is not yet night.
From her seat at the front
She can see them all –
An entire pueblo,
And her finger hovers above the button:
She does not want them to stop.
Going through the automatic doors,
She squints: the lights
Are so bright.
Her daughter says they call it
Bright lights syndrome
When migrants move to big cities
For better lives.
She wipes the windows until she has wiped away
The darkness and the sun starts to come up,
The early morning quiet torn
Only by blue flashing lights and PPE delivery trucks.
And scrubs away the hands that marked the handles.
When her mop soaks up red
She prays for whoever’s it was
And her tears fall into the bucket of soapy suds.
And she wonders, though she tries not to,
When she walks past the wards
Of people no longer breathing for themselves
Whether one day soon
Some other güey will stand where she is now
And look through the window at her
With blue-gloved hands and pray.
As patients start to wake, she leaves
No longer smelling of sleep but of
Alcohol gel
And bleach.
She climbs to the top deck but
There is someone in her favourite seat.
Judge’s Comments (Katherine Lockton)
“The standard of the entries was high, but this truly deserves to be the winning poem as I found myself going back to it repeatedly as I looked through the vast number of entries and made my long list. Both confident and colourful, this is a poem which demands to be read and re read. The writer paints a stunning visual and intimate painting of the NHS and life as a key worker through the use of the rich and sensory language. The poem captures the spirit and heart of the competition beautifully. The writer’s love of key workers is very clearly shown as is her knowledge of the trials and struggles NHS staff face. At the heart of the poem is a compelling narrative that is both moving and brilliant. I loved the dynamic integration of Spanish which really adds both colour and life to the poem as well as playing homage to the vast Latinx community which holds up the NHS. The poet should be congratulated on their close attention to detail, powerful imagination and their cinematic approach to storytelling which lifts the words off the page to create an experience that is intimate and real. Very well done to the poet. Congratulations!”
Written Word ‘Hand’ poems