EXILE

Vanessa Ackerman

The building where my children were born

has no scent

and one of the walls 

is always crumbling

A long time ago my friend told me

how he feigned madness to avoid

conscription:

I’d eat the whole cake 

even if the others were starving

even if they begged me to share it

I wish my children could live

under their own dirty sun

the mornings here are haughty

You’d better behave, none of this nonsense

Share the last slice

Vanessa Ackerman is an actor, writer and educator based in Cambridge,UK. Her plays include Love No Country, The Many Lives of Clara M, Saturn Return and Three Glorious Days, and her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Barren Poetry, Marble Poetry, Cephalo Press Anthology Borders and Belonging, Flights of the Dragonfly, Dreich Magazine and Anthropocene. She was a 2022/23 Mercury Theatre Playwright. Her collection Small Rebellions won the 2023 Dreich Classic Chapbook Competition.