Playing With Crayons
Andrew Oldham

You cannot cadge my crayons.
You cannot talk about my crayons.
You cannot look at my crayons.
When I am crayoning you must leave the room.
When I hang my pictures on the fridge,
you cannot use them to make notes:
(1) Not even for phone numbers.
(2) Not even in emergencies.
If I leave the crayons on the table,
you must put them away in the correct order;
even though you do not know what that is.
Whatever I draw you have to recognise what I tell you it is.
When I shove pencils into locks to keep you from whispering to others
you will believe me when I say, ‘You are wrong’.
You will believe in my crayons.
All the colours are yours to look at but only if I say you can.

Andrew Oldham is an award winning poet and writer. His poetry has been heard on BBC Radio Four’s Poetry Please and in 2013 he was voice behind the film, Chalk Trace on Channel 4. Poetry by him can be found in Ambit, The London Magazine, Interpreter’s House, North American Review and Poetry Salzburg. He has appeared in the seminal anthologies, Versions of the North: Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry, Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam and The Robin Hood Book: Verse Versus Austerity. Andrew is a prior Jerwood-Arvon nominee. His first collection was Ghosts of a Low Moon (Lapwing, Belfast 2010). He teaches in Higher Education and is a lifestyle journalist for The Guardian blog, Sainsbury’s Magazine and Life on Pig Row. He still screams at the North Wind but now has a family to join in. www.andrewoldham.co.uk

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