work in progress
Sweet September morning in a classroom,
a teacher talks in dedicated prose, holding
proud, between her finger and her thumb:
"A polo mint. The mushroom gene is like a polo mint."
And she smirks upon the hum of a projector light:
"Slice the vector, take a letter from the tethered gene,
Insert an earnest young resistant and let it snuggle in;
Watch it replicate and generate a sister ring."
And we, twenty tired girls in matching grey,
With our ink stained soft fists, plough the sun dried soil
In the pots by the window ledge, where
science is a rainfall and a flower, blooming,
resting insect observations and a litany of questions,
as we idle watch the juniors play below.
And just by them, a little patch of mushrooms grow,
like polo mints, all lined up in a row.
Still marked, but with letters we have sown,
we point and ask, when shall we have those?
Gene Replacement
'Gene Replacement' by Anna McIvor, who hails from Derry and will tell you, at length, why it deserves to be the European capital of culture, despite having absconded to London to study French & Spanish, and falling in love with greasy spoons. Occasionally she sings.
Illustration by Risa Moro