The Europe Challenge

After ‘Foxglove Country’ by Zaffar Kunial

Sometimes I’ll spend weeks

wracking my brain for a way

to capture a sound stuck

in the shadows of age.

How do you describe

the clack of a librarian

stamping a date on

a page? How many

consonants must you pull

apart with your tongue?

One day, I read,

and X-gl comes.

The melody of a deal,

a promise, a gift.

Xgl, Xgl, Xgl. How many

hours did I spend

sifting through stories,

hearing a muted song like this?

I can still feel the rough green

carpet marbling my knees

when I knelt at shelves

of plastic-sheathed children’s

fiction and poetry. Did your heart

also leap at the sight of the insert

blotted with a multitude of

return dates? The lipstick marks

of the many hands that have

kissed these books before.

We were so young

when the library

taught us how to love,

and how to let go.

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About the Author

Credit: Barry Gillespie

Jay Mitra (they/he, b. 2000) is a British Indian punk poet, English teacher, and non-fiction writer from Yorkshire, currently based in London. They were selected as one of Apples & Snakes’ 40 Future Voices in poetry and were a winner of the Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2023. You can find out more about them on Instagram and Twitter @punkofcolour.