“BOUDICCA” by Theophilus Kwek

BOUDICCA

It isn’t Naomi’s fault though it is her shoe

that settles on an edge of the drawing

we spend all morning on in Mrs Pedlar’s class –

Boudicca, queen of the Celts. Still unskilled

with noses I picture her aslant, swaddled round

in red hair and rousing the troops to war.

Ready? On Mrs Pedlar’s cry we are to raise

our queens above our heads, high as we can

so our Dads and Mums will see what we’ve been up to,

a flourish I practice to perfection

except this time only half the portrait arrives

eagerly in my hands, while stuck face-down

on the gym’s mopped floor the other lies, one graceful

arm gleaming with its crayon shield. A shock,

though not quite of loss, only of pleasure thwarted

as I imagine those at the jagged

edge of a field must feel. Somewhere, applause. Somewhere

a triumph, and you, here, with whatever this is.

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Theophilus Kwek has been shortlisted twice for the Singapore Literature Prize, and is the youngest writer and first Singaporean to be awarded the Cikada Prize by the Swedish Institute, for poetry that ‘defends the inviolability of life’. His most recent collection is Commonwealth, published by Carcanet Press in May 2025.