Hallelujah for 50ft Women Read online

  The receptionist is indifferent; he’s seen it all,

  leads her through labyrinthine corridors to a plain white room.

  The director looks her up and down; tells her to undress.

  In an alley among whores, drunks and the stench of fish,

  the Dutch merchant strikes a bargain with an American captain,

  who has to sell his ship. Years later, broke, he sells the mermaid

  for a fraction of what he paid. But that’s the way with sirens,

  bestowing fortune or grief as whim dictates.

  Bathed in his laptop’s subaqueous glow,

  a man wanders the internet’s dark alleys, safe search off.

  He finds a video of a girl with buoyant breasts

  and hairless sex sprawled on the bed

  of a white hotel room. He clicks.

  The posters appear overnight: a genuine mermaid,

  caught off the shores of distant ‘Feejee’. Crowds surge

  to the museum, pay their dime. The men go to catch a glimpse

  of milky skin, flowing hair, peeping nipples;

  the women to hear the songs she must surely sing.

  She dies several times a day; fakes so many little deaths

  she’s starting to feel a part of her has died inside.

  By now she doesn’t have to think: just curls her lips,

  and, eyes glassy, looks at the wave-like patterns on the ceiling

  while her co-star fills the red-pink shell of her sex.

  Munching popcorn and cotton candy, the punters

  walk past waxworks of famous murderers, but still are not prepared

  for the sight of a blackened baby orang-utan with a salmon tail.

  The Feejee Mermaid sprawls in its case,

  glass eyes reflecting all those drowned expressions,

  lips curled as though in laughter at some secret joke.

  ALEX TOMS

  Her Mother Hides in the Wardrobe

  Julia wears a pink dress and earrings,

  has green eyes and a pony tail.

  She has herpes, hepatitis, thrush,

  staphylococcus, cervical erosion, HIV.

  She lives with her mum and dad in

  a studio flat in an old district of Kiev.

  They have three cats: Hanka, Efedra,

  Morifius – opium, ephedrine, morphine.

  She learns English before Euro 2012;

  ‘my name is Julia, fifty dollars fifty minutes’.

  BOGUSIA WARDEIN

  Katie’s end of week routine

  Ah step, tenderly

  into a small ocean.

  Lower each inch

  of skin

  in nobody’s eyes.

  A layer of lavender

  bubbles. No need

  for acting

  ah let ma belly hang

  its childbearin’

  rounded pear shape.

  Drop ma whole body

  in. Caressed by heat

  of the water. Protected,

  enveloped, like a baby

  in its mother’s womb

  listening to the rhythm

  of ma heartbeat as ah once

  did hers. Ah submerge

  ma head, float

  until ah surface,

  gaspin’ for breath.

  Washin’ their hands,

  their eyes away

  from memory.

  Emerge skin pink,

  soft, fresh as

  a newborn.

  JULIE EDGELL

  Three Ways of Recovering a Body

  By chance I was alone in my bed the morning

  I woke to find my body had gone.

  It had been coming. I’d cut off my hair in sections

  so each of you would have something to remember,

  then my nails worked loose from their beds

  of oystery flesh. Who was it got them?

  One night I slipped out of my skin. It lolloped

  hooked to my heels, hurting. I had to spray on

  more scent so you could find me in the dark,

  I was going so fast. One of you begged for my ears

  because you could hear the sea in them.

  First I planned to steal myself back. I was a mist

  on thighs, belly and hips. I’d slept with so many men.

  I was with you in the ash-haunted stations of Poland,

  I was with you on that grey plaza in Berlin

  while you wolfed three doughnuts without stopping,

  thinking yourself alone. Soon I recovered my lips

  by waiting behind the mirror while you shaved.

  You pouted. I peeled away kisses like wax

  no longer warm to the touch. Then I flew off.

  Next I decided to become a virgin. Without a body

  it was easy to make up a new story. In seven years

  every invisible cell would be renewed

  and none of them would have touched any of you.

  I went to a cold lake, to a grey-lichened island,

  I was gold in the wallet of the water.

  I was known to the inhabitants, who were in love

  with the coveted whisper of my virginity:

  all too soon they were bringing me coffee and perfume,

  cash under stones. I could really do something for them.

  Thirdly I tried marriage to a good husband

  who knew my past but forgave it. I believed in the power

  of his penis to smoke out all those men

  so that bit by bit my body service would resume,

  although for a while I’d be the one woman in the world

  who was only present in the smile of her vagina.

  He stroked the air where I might have been.

  I turned to the mirror and saw mist gather

  as if someone lived in the glass. Recovering

  I breathed to myself, ‘Hold on! I’m coming.’

  HELEN DUNMORE

  Grandmother

  My Grandmother’s shoes are laced-up tight

  beneath her dress of stretched violet.

  Her jars of beans are counted and polished,

  her starched, bleached sheets hung out to dry.

  Streuth, girl, she says, when a man beats you

  it’s with the beam of love in his eye.

  I’ll choose for you a man made of meat –

  if he feeds you, he’ll feed you the best cuts of the beast.

  Here come the men like a full river,

  here the men come like a rope, thrown.

  They bring their gifts of broken-legged horses,

  ready-made cigarettes and pressure pans.

  They talk to Grandmother in her breathless kitchen,

  as she skims the cream or stirs the tub.

  They talk to Grandmother in the ticking parlour

  where she rocks and rocks a creaking pram.

  If they put their knuckles or flesh against me,

  I’ll kick the parlour chairs, I’ll break their hands.

  You can shut me up in the oasthouse, Grandmother,

  my neck will be snow-smirred, scalded with ice.

  I may be gloved and small-footed, Grandma,

  I may seem, in my black dress, all shy of the plough;

  but my empty bowl gleams like a chosen thing

  and my heart, Grandma, my heart is a field.

  SUZANNE BATTY

  Ventriloquist

  In life your anger never burned in words,

  You turned away and whispered as you went

  To clean or cook; that sibilance we heard

  As if from some small dying creature sent.

  You spoke in polished ornaments and flowers

  Arranged in vases, pastry made for pies,

  In floors scrubbed clean and whites you boiled for hours.

  One morning woke and knew that these were lies.

  In search of truth wherever it might be,

  You followed all those unsaid words you’d throw
n

  Down to the beach, and straight into the sea,

  Your apron on, its pockets full of stone.

  Looking for you, feet sinking in the sands,

  I see white death with fish held in her hands.

  RUTH AYLETT

  Bright Day

  (i.m. my mother)

  There is a sea of people

  in the church. The ceilings are high.

  I have made the long walk

  to the golden railings on my spindly legs

  in my white Communion shoes and socks.

  The crowd pushes to the big swing doors.

  Outside it’s a bright, bright day.

  The white sun flashes at me and I want

  to fall, the cough I was keeping

  at the back of my throat starts to bark.

  My mother looks at me, at my white face,

  at the black rings circling my eyes.

  She has a question on her face.

  She stretches out her arm, her hand

  cups my elbow, her other hand clasps

  my wrist – helping me across the road.

  The sun’s daggers are flicking

  at cars as they pass. My spiky elbow

  rests in my mother’s cupped hand

  in the soft pads. Her roly-poly fingers

  press through the nylon of my white

  summer cardigan, the elbow folds

  into the blanket of her hand.

  From elbow to wrist, she holds the long bone,

  carries it across the road.

  MARY NOONAN

  Armour

  This body

  Is no more than the armour

  That an archangel

  Chose to wear to pass through the world

  And, disguised like this,

  With its wings wrapped up

  Inside of me,

  With the visor of its smile

  Hermetically sealed on my face,

  It goes into the heat of battle,

  Is assaulted by injury and insult,

  Soiled by vicious looks

  And even caressed

  On the steel plating of its skin

  Beneath which revulsion incubates

  An exterminating angel.

  ANA BLANDIANA

  translated from the Romanian by Paul Scott Derrick & Viorica Patea

  If

  If my body was a country, it would be

  Afghanistan; pregnant with IEDs, problematic, incomprehensible;

  If my body was a river it would be

  Indonesian Citarum; sluggish, mercury poisoned, cargo of turds and plastic;

  If my body was an animal it would be

  A hyena; toothless, starving, drooling in its concrete lair;

  If my body was a colour it would be

  That indefinable, infantile impasto of all colours mashed together;

  If my body was music it would be

  Jangling, angry discords best switched off;

  If my body was a woman it would not be

  Me.

  FRANCES KAY

  Nude

  (after a portrait by Dominique Renson)

  Framed by white wood, a woman stands,

  thighs swathed purple, muddied plum,

  thick, flexed and worked,

  textured to a dense auburn tuft,

  resinous between rounded hips.

  Square-knuckled fingers

  hang limp, curled and shadowy,

  familiar in their empty tenderness.

  Whereas the stomach’s smoothly oiled

  pink is smeared in a rich beige tallow,

  laboured over, brushed

  to where lilac ribs corrugate,

  without any mark or mole.

  Uneven, light-bulb breasts

  illuminate different directions,

  capped by nipples daubed peach

  soft shading, as if sucked slowly.

  And higher, the throat

  is ridged by another redbrown thicket,

  brushed back from the face

  where all movement culminates.

  With its dark lips, jutting cheeks,

  flared nose and still, clear examination

  of the eyes, blue – mine staring back at me.

  SARAH HYMAS

  I put a pen in my cunt once

  I put a pen in my cunt once

  just to play with myself

  when I was at a loose end

  when we were in one of those times

  lying in straight lines in the dark

  not touching

  long milk hands stroke

  my words to sour cream

  this is what it wrote

  DEBORAH ALMA

  On New Year’s Eve

  It’s that dangerous lust feeling, that tonight

  why not just let go? thing and you reach

  for the red lipstick, that colour

  your mother wouldn’t let you

  wear as a teenager,

  the red of blood dripping

  from vampires’ teeth,

  chilli pepper red hot red,

  the kind of red that pouts

  and swings its hips;

  and there is a frizz in the air

  a stirring, a throbbing

  dance that enters through your feet and you think

  what the hell, and your shoes

  match the lipstick, and oh baby

  you are so ready,

  and when he turns and smiles

  all you can think of is cock

  and the two of you

  in a darkened corner thrusting tongues

  and you know

  you are going to hate yourself in the morning,

  but you have another tequila anyway,

  and you slip your hand into his

  but only because you like the curve of his arm,

  and you may not remember his name in the morning

  but right now he’s perfect,

  and you think what the hell,

  you are so ready,

  oh yes baby.

  KERRY HAMMERTON

  He Sees Me

  I like this man who

  charmed by me

  slips alongside and inside of me

  like the tongue of a dog

  lapping at my life

  throwing the ball of it

  into the air with joy

  to catch me out again and again

  and laugh at my earnestness in odd places

  he says

  he says I rise up like a hundred balloons

  let loose from a child’s hand

  beautiful, bold, even when out of sight

  like notes of music falling over themselves

  like larks ascending

  he says when I sleep I sigh

  and he watches me wake and smiles

  at the fuzz of my hair and my mind in the morning

  he is charmed, he is charmed

  I begin to charm even myself

  he sees me so lovely

  DEBORAH ALMA

  Bulimic

  Blood dries on the bathroom floor

  beside my head as I lie curled in

  a foetal ball watching dripping pipes.

  I am a dirty puddle of darkness after purging.

  In black clothes on a bed of polar tiles

  my back yawns bare between a belted waist

  and little top, silently awing the still tub.

  The dim moon of my body is shocked

  by pale shores of arms and neck and face,

  made paler still by moonlight and stars.

  At midnight the bathroom is hushed.

  Ingrained in the circle of my dead gaze

  the toilet stops hissing. Innocent

  as a lunatic I knelt hours ago before it,

  hearing a skinny saint rave within me –

  ‘Empty, empty her and she’ll be thin!’

  I clung to the covenant like clingfilm

  over a rib and heaved her hungers.


  Drunk on her breath and bowed

  to a cistern I emptied, emptied,

  emptied her,

  burned her weeds and wiles –

  I trespassed into the body’s chambers

  and raped it with two blistering fingers.

  This fire may lick and melt

  but it is unforgiving; my fingers

  may enter but parch and scorch

  in the caustic passion of juices from the gut.

  The body weeps, reluctant.

  Be wary of it.

  She erupts maniacally

  until blood makes her holy, barren, empty.

  Neither tears nor the easy flush

  can patch a ceremony. It escapes

  into the eve of thinness.

  The cold body keels in honeyed drips

  onto tiles; knees collapse,

  elbows dance graceless

  from the seat; a demented head

  falls on a scale, blood trickling from the nose.

  Now, curled beside dripping pipes,

  weighing the head’s load, in black clothes

  framing the arms, the neck, the face.

  The tiles do not warm the numb.

  We move like spirits.

  LEANNE O’SULLIVAN

  Underneath Our Skirts

  Although a temple

  to honour one man’s voluntary death,