Sarah Mnatzaganian

She knocks back her latte like a seal gulping mackerel
and heads for the station with gifts for her first-born:

Eucalyptus leaves to fill his room with forest medicine,
fresh goat's cheese, a green-gold throw for his college chair,

a bottle of colloidal silver to murder the germs in his throat.
FLANNERY, scoffs the crane by the tracks.

A round cake of apples and almonds, a Guernsey sweater,
heavily darned, and two letters from the bank. She might arrive

with nothing to say. At the bottom of her trolley: Ribston Pippin,
Adams Pearmain, Blenheim Orange, Winter Gold. The cake

was still warm when she packed it last night. It may have
ripened the apples a little. She should have made pesto.

is an Anglo-Armenian poet. Highly commended in the 2019 Mslexia/PBS pamphlet competition and shortlisted for the Poetry Business pamphlet competition 2016/17, her poems have appeared in The Rialto, Magma, The North, London Grip, Atrium, Snakeskin, 14 Magazine, Fenland Reed, PITW and numerous anthologies.