Lucozade

it bound the town together, a gift 
for the hospital visit, a drink so classy some raised it 
at home like a toast in a wine glass

its crinkly wrapping nearly the colour
of the saffron Sikh, bright as the salwar bottoms
your mum wore and who’d say
she’s the marigold of God
in whom pure faith will never run dry

its crinkly wrapping like a sweetie paper 
you touched with your fingertips 
so you’d snap crackle and pop it 
all the way home, and here’s you now

carrying a bottle all the way home

it’s so big that its scrunched head
becomes a bonfire flame 
scratching your five or six your old chin,
as you near the front door – it 
slips and smashes
the glass cutting through the gold leaf

you tell your mum what you’ve done, 
she doesn’t slap you but puts on her sandals 
marching to the shop – you’re breathless behind her,

you bought it from the Indian shop
the only Indian shop in your town
and she’s been mumbling some stuff about 
a cleaner caste Sikh – back home his lot clean
the Lucozade glasses of our landowner caste

then she’s in his shop, and at him – you took my son’s 
money but you didn’t give him the Lucozade bottle, 
I’m not leaving till…he’s telling her to leave 
and she says, how dare he diddle her son

she’s got a voice sharp and heavy as a scythe 
in your garden like the one she swung
on the farms of her milk teeth years

he tries to ask you about the bottle you took 
but she won’t have him speak to you

the customers, who aren’t Indian at all, frown
at all these foreign words being raised
and he keeps shuffling his scared-looking glasses
then says, take a bottle and leave 

then actually brings a bottle to rest on the counter
and watches her take her time as she takes it

from your front steps – you clear up the mess,
the whole scene, as you lift the carbonated shards,
is a golden vomit – what happens, she’ll say

when you let things slip through your hands