Dyslexia Runs in Families by Karen Downs-Barton

Light slants into the scullery kitchen
where I am looking at pictures in comics.

Tripe is bubbling in a battered saucepan
while in a Pyrex jar an onion cools in white liquor.

Bapo has rocked back on his one good chair,
balanced between floating and falling.

His newspaper is a curtain concealing his face;
he might be sleeping or pretending, like I am.

I look at the smudged lines of old print,
his earthy fingers supporting the pages.

I scan the images of upside-down people,
whose lives his hold has made a turmoil.
~*~
Note - Bapo:  Grandfather, colloquial Romani
~*~
Biography:  Karen Downs-Barton is a neurodiverse poet from the Roma community. She is a Creative Writing Masters candidate at Bath Spa University, UK where her manuscript explores experiences of a Roma child growing up in the state childcare system. Her work is forthcoming or published in Tears in the Fence, Night Picnic Journal, The High Window, Alyss, The Otolith, The Fem Review, The Goose, The Curly Mind, Persian Sugar in English Tea, amongst others. Find her at: https://thepapercutpoet.wordpress.com