Aysar Ghassan

tomato feed

Snorts ring through the dyke, naughty boys becoming
limbs of trees, hooting at tales of heads split open.
I stand below, scuffing the trunk, rehearsing my excuses.

Ferocious music on the news, grown-ups in shellsuits dance,
brawling with themselves, their eyes enormous,
on railway tracks, places where no one is allowed.

I itch to run through neighbours’ front gardens.

Aysar Ghassan lives in Coventry, UK, and was a ‘core poet’ at the BBC Contains Strong Language festival, 2021. His poems feature in magazines including The Interpreter's House, Porridge, Poetry Wales, Under The Radar, Ambit, Magma, Poetry Birmingham, The Lampeter Review, Strix, Abridged and The Washington Square Review. In addition, they have been broadcast on BBC 6 Music and BBC 5 Live. In 2019 he represented Coventry in the Coventry-Cork Twin Cities Poetry Exchange. Aysar teaches automotive design and has written and narrated a programme on the associated history and practice of this discipline for BBC Radio 3.

Aysar wrote the following about ‘Tomato Feed’:

I think I wrote the first version of this poem in 2020,  but was never happy with the flow until quite recently. The ideas of 'wildness' and 'wimpishness' have remained core in every iteration though. A couple of years ago I started using tomato feed in my garden and thought it would make a fitting title for this poem. I hope you enjoy reading it.