Aysar Ghassan

March 12th 1992

Drive. Exit at the motorway service station. Run over an onion ring. Park. Instruct the ratchet on the handbrake to proclaim that you have finished parking. Avoid eye contact in the washroom. Resist the temptation to write your name and landline number on the cubicle wall. Never wash your hands—they will assume that you are infected. Stamp on a gherkin’s face. Was it a good idea to arrange to meet Jón Páll Sigmarsson by the Kingsize Mars bars? When you get nervous, you begin to yawn uncontrollably. This lacks decorum. It will come across as downright insulting. He will be apoplectic, tear a phone book’s worth of signed photos in half, scrunch you up into a medicine ball. The crowd will bay for ketchup. Some twerp will pull out a camcorder, send the video to Beadle’s About, pocket £250. Your children will disown the testes from which they sprang. Your wife will move back in with her mother. Be the man your dog thinks you are. Cock your Adam’s Apple, think only of cheeseburger.

Aysar Ghassan was a ‘core poet’ at BBC Contains Strong Language, 2021. His poems feature in journals including, Under The Radar, Ambit, Magma, Poetry Birmingham, The Lampeter Review and Strix. In addition, they have been broadcast on BBC 6 Music and 5 Live. Aysar teaches Automotive & Transport Design and in 2021 he wrote and narrated a talk on Automotive Design for the BBC programme ‘The Essay’. He is currently a Room 204 mentee with Writing West Midlands.