ZALUZIANSKYA
All along the road to Sutton Bingham, I kept saying your name –
Zaluzianskya, Zaluzianskya – so as not to forget it. I’d never heard anything
so voluptuous. The way they talked about you on the radio, your vanilla fragrance,
your origins in the Drakensberg mountains (perhaps I’d once trodden on you!),
your double-lobed petals coloured crimson on the underside. I kept thinking
when I get home, I’m going to find out everything there is to know about you.
I’m going to buy seeds and grow pots of you along all the window sills.
I gripped the steering wheel - and laughed and - I HADN’T EVEN SEEN YOU!
It would be like having a child in the house again.
With a name like that you would have been a bold revolutionary girl,
throwing stones at the totalitarians, telling the truth about everything.
Everyone would have wanted to know you.
Everyone would have wanted to be on your side.
Everyone would have wanted to call out your name:
ZALUZIANSKYA!
ANNIE FREUD’s first full collection The Best Man That Ever Was (Picador 2007) was awarded the Dimplex Prize for New Writing (Poetry). Her second collection The Mirabelles (Picador 2010) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. She is also an artist working in a variety of media and is renowned for her live performances. Her third collection The Remains will be published in June 2015.