Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • William Wright

    Uploaded by

    nlperspectives
    120 views2 pages
    Six children play barefoot on a rooftop terrace to avoid burning their feet, including the poet and their brother. They soon stop coming to birthday parties on the roof as the brother gets sicker. At night, the brother is alone on the roof under the moon, fading away. When too ill for school, the brother would stay home and beat the poet at video games. The score charts were filled with the brother's initials. Then the brother returned to the hospital wards, leaving the poet alone with growing fear and the beginning to surpass the brother's scores. The poems explore the poet's childhood in Hong Kong and loss of his younger brother to cancer.

    Original Description:

    Poetry

    Copyright

    © Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document
    Six children play barefoot on a rooftop terrace to avoid burning their feet, including the poet and their brother. They soon stop coming to birthday parties on the roof as the brother gets sicker. At night, the brother is alone on the roof under the moon, fading away. When too ill for school, the brother would stay home and beat the poet at video games. The score charts were filled with the brother's initials. Then the brother returned to the hospital wards, leaving the poet alone with growing fear and the beginning to surpass the brother's scores. The poems explore the poet's childhood in Hong Kong and loss of his younger brother to cancer.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Flag for inappropriate content
    120 views2 pages

    William Wright

    Uploaded by

    nlperspectives
    Six children play barefoot on a rooftop terrace to avoid burning their feet, including the poet and their brother. They soon stop coming to birthday parties on the roof as the brother gets sicker. At night, the brother is alone on the roof under the moon, fading away. When too ill for school, the brother would stay home and beat the poet at video games. The score charts were filled with the brother's initials. Then the brother returned to the hospital wards, leaving the poet alone with growing fear and the beginning to surpass the brother's scores. The poems explore the poet's childhood in Hong Kong and loss of his younger brother to cancer.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 2

    Happy Valley

    Six children barefoot on a roof terrace; to stop is to burn their feet on sun-hot bricks, so they keep moving. Two pairs of twins with me and my brother. Hold on to the boy with auburn hair, and the paint smudged red across the bridge of his nose. Hold on as the sounds of children thin and disappear. On the rooftop garden there is no crying, no paediatric ward mural, balloons in its clenched fist. Soon enough it will be the last birthday party, with cake-covered grinning faces; the drum of a dozen feet on hot brick, or perhaps half that or less. At night, my brother alone under a dark sky and a full moon turning him ghostly almost gone.

    Famicom

    Too sick to go to school, you sat at home and beat me black and blue on our old Nintendo Famicom. Super Mario, Street Fighter 2. FRA FRA FRA The score charts were full of the first three letters of your name.

    Then you went back to the wards. I was on my own. My name began to creep back up the lists, AND I began to fear FRA your vanishing presence, AND I could not help it.

    William Wright is a poet living and working in Bath. He is a graduate of the Bath Spa MA in Creative Writing, and has been published previously in The London Magazine. He has also read at the event 100,000 Poets for Change. Happy Valley and 'Famicom' are part of a series of poems exploring Williams childhood in Hong Kong and the loss of his younger brother to cancer.

    You might also like