COMEDY Poem: Meatballs, by Shekina Rose

It was only the time of the month
the day we went shopping for a MALM flat pack, one hundred tealights,
a fluffy rug for my bedroom and a cheese grater,
I vomited IKEA meatballs onto an IKEA bed,
retching lumps of pretend meat and Lingonberry juice;
shit-coloured puke, prettying the white pillows.

Mum found a man with a dustpan, dressed in yellow and blue.
He fluttered around me like a blue-tit, swept up sick,
removed the duvet cover, like he’d seen it all before-
a monthly occurrence. She apologised repeatedly, twiddling her wooden pencil
as I writhed on the synthetic floor, my stomach being clawed apart,
Mum explained, by my ovaries.

She lifted me to my feet, and together we shoved our way
through IKEA’s spiral maze, followed yellow arrows to the Ladies;
where my pale face and inflamed eyes stared at me
through a wiped-clean TOREKOV mirror, complete with a £12 price tag.
Mum rubbed dribbles of sick from my chin and neck with toilet roll,
offered me an Ibuprofen, which I gulped down with warm water from the tap,

a Polo mint to hide the meaty stench. Vaseline for my lips,
and a brush of pink blush for my chalky cheeks.
They get easier, sweetie, she said, until the menopause…
She laughed and squeezed my shoulder, as pain shot through my spine,
and off we went again, walking round and round in circles,
through the one-way flow of IKEA, for two more hours of bloody shopping.

Author: poetryfest

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