Orlaine McDonald
Biography - click to expand
Orlaine was born in the Midlands but headed South as soon as she could, where she gained a degree in Theatre at Rose Bruford College. She has spent the intervening years running theatre projects for children and young people and working as Learning Mentor in a primary school. Her poem ‘Hero’ won the Writers Forum magazine poetry competition and her short story, ‘Drowning’ was published in Smoke Magazine.
Exmoor
Sick of being stared at in narrow village streets –
you say it’s because I’m beautiful, I know it’s because
I’m black – I’m happier up here on a desolate path,
streams puttering through ragged banks, all this green
sweeping round us like a cloak.
You’re stupidly pleased with the skull of a sheep
found in the mud, an ice-packed ridge by a gate.
Barely attached to the intricate cage of its bones,
I look away while you twist and tug. You promise
me our son will love it, I wonder if we should name it.
Late February sun washes the windscreen on
the drive to the top of the moor, skull rolls
around in the boot while the sky explodes
with orange and violet streaks, clouds strut,
become majestic, like story-book kingdoms.
But I’m thinking of the small boy in the Tea Room,
a rosy toddler with spit on his lips. How he stared
at me, holding half a cheese sandwich in his fist like
a missile. Staring, till I stuck out my tongue
and he looked away offended.
1972
The woman with the black baby keeps her shoes in a box.
White patent platforms, they nestle like fat mice sleeping.
So as not to remind her of the fall, from the top of the stairs
of a double-decker bus, and how the baby slipped
like liquid and bounced before her, hitting every single step.
So now, when people stare at the plum coloured bruise
which blooms above the baby’s eye, their silence says,
as well as loving niggers she batters babies too.
Hero
My bike got nicked and some girl
was seen riding it round the Adventure.
Mum’s new boyfriend was there like
a shot in his Bruce Willis vest.
‘S not yours is it
This wasn’t a question.
Stickers ripped off but I knew it was mine.
She stared at him with dirty puddle eyes.
Slid off slow, letting it fall. He caught it
with one hand and humped it
over his back up three flights of stairs. I ride
it indoors now, wedged against the dryer in the
hallway, pedalling backwards while his spliff-smoke
halo snakes out of the window and into the blue.