Dragons’ Tails

Lulu Marken

Limescale curling around a plug hole as a dragon’s tail.
I washed underwear, colour of Virginian red clay mines

In the same sink

That I spat toothpaste in at five years old.
Nimbostratic rusted water, hemmed with soap scum,

The kind of water you could drown in –

as your mother is settled by the stove searing onions in oil –

Without ever being killed.