Jenna Clake

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How much longer until I get this out?

You are eating fig rolls
because your mother thinks
you like them, as she does,
and she wraps them in paper
napkins like slices of cake;
you found the fig rolls
in the pocket of your bag, and
you want her to keep on
buying them so you are never
able to tell the truth,
so that you eat them until
they remind you of her and
you have grown
to like them like you taught a
boyfriend to like olives and
then to like mushrooms,
as though this were improving
him as a person, but really
he was lactose intolerant,
as was the other woman he was fucking.

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JENNA CLAKE’s debut collection, Fortune Cookie, received the Melita Hume Prize, an Eric Gregory Award, and was shortlisted for the Somerset Maugham Award. Her second collection, Museum of Ice Cream, is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in 2021.

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