Hallelujah for 50ft Women Read online

  feel no need

  to change my lines

  when I move I’m target light

  Come up and see me sometime

  2

  Come up and see me sometime

  Come up and see me sometime

  My breasts are huge exciting

  amnions of watermelon

  your hands can’t cup

  my thighs are twin seals

  fat slick pups

  there’s a purple cherry

  below the blues

  of my black seabelly

  there’s a mole that gets a ride

  each time I shift the heritage

  of my behind

  Come up and see me sometime

  GRACE NICHOLS

  Regular Checks Advised

  Tits in grubby photographs, the lens puffs them up

  like garden birds in winter. Mills&Boon breasts,

  and the same for the hungry baby in the service station, feeding.

  Bosoms for the shop assistant, arms up to let the tape slide round;

  something in wire, lace, elastane to hold the bloody things down.

  They’re mammaries when suddenly not yours, when

  someone with a face like grey water tells you it’ll pinch a little,

  removes a cylindrical portion of the puppies for pornography,

  the bee-stings squeezed in the playground,

  the girls the boys allude to, to be sent to the lab like a dirty text.

  Those funbags have their interest piqued: you’ll hear back in three weeks.

  ALICE TARBUCK

  To a Friend for Her Naked Breasts

  Madam I praise you, ’cause you’re free

  And you do not conceal from me

  What hidden in your heart doth lie,

  If I can it through your breasts spy.

  Some Ladies will not show their breasts

  For fear men think they are undressed,

  Or by’t their hearts they should discover

  They do’t to tempt some wanton lover.

  They are afraid tempters to be,

  Because a curse imposed they see

  Upon the tempter that was first,

  By an all-seeing God that’s just.

  But though I praise you have a care

  Of that all-seeing eye, and fear,

  Lest he through your bare breasts see sin

  And punish you for what’s within.

  ELIZA (fl. 1652)

  Trichotillomania

  she plucks out

  each eyebrow hair

  one by one

  with platinum tweezers

  and stands them up

  on the black lacquer dressing-table:

  her row of soldiers

  first line of defence

  above them, framed

  in the oblong mirror:

  her deforested forehead

  wondering eyes

  inconsequential nose

  the fleshy lips protected

  by a layer of down

  (now that would have to go)

  her smooth neck

  her far too animal body

  JANIS FREEGARD

  Mobile Gallery of Me.

  I am abstract personified.

  The graceful ‘S’ bend

  of scoliosis spine.

  Swooping slice of lobectomy scars,

  picked out in pointillist stitch marks.

  Appendix smile knife-stroked

  across my belly, gnarl of arthritis

  that has turned my hands

  to Rackham-style roots.

  Cicatrice seams where a new shoulder

  and knee were inserted,

  marks in flesh like a palette knife’s edge.

  Worn the way others wear tattoos.

  Proudly, extravagantly. Unhidden.

  Defiant to the stares, pitying looks.

  This is me. Complete with battle scars,

  medals, commendations.

  Works of art. Bestowed upon me

  for surviving.

  MIKI BYRNE

  Busy Dying

  I used to listen to people going on about stuff but

  time is precious and I don’t any more.

  I used to live in Germany

  I used to remember the reg. no. of my car

  I used to be more organised about paperwork

  I used to get paid on Fridays – money in my hand

  You rarely see actual notes nowadays.

  I used to be in a folk band and sang Hard Times

  I used to collect bits and pieces in an Old Curiosity Shop

  biscuit tin. I still have it, full of treasure.

  I opened it recently to place a square

  of my mother’s granny print apron in it.

  I used to live in the city

  I used to listen to advice from friends

  Now I listen to my own gut which is much happier.

  My head is too.

  I used to be a child. Some days I can still sulk.

  I used to believe in The Waltons, The Little House on the Prairie,

  Flipper and Tammy.

  I used to look at the news, bought a newspaper every day

  but it’s all bad stuff.

  The beautiful simple, seeing otters at the lake, isn’t news.

  I used to chew Wrigleys gum

  I used to know where I left stuff

  Now I lose it all the time

  Keys, pin numbers, beloved animals, my parents and friends

  I’m still losing them.

  I used to have two breasts now I have one

  I used to think the remaining breast

  Should be in the middle of my chest

  I felt unbalanced.

  It took a year to accept this ‘new look’.

  I knew I had accepted it when one morning

  I was about to shout

  ‘Has anyone seen my prosthesis?’

  Wouldn’t that be shocking funny?

  I rolled back onto the bed and laughed.

  I used to be busy dying now I’m busy living.

  ROSALEEN GLENNON

  A Room of Her Own

  For the last sixty years my grandmother

  has cut and styled her own hair. It’s grown thin,

  her scalp shows the colour of communion

  wafers, but the shade remains rich auburn.

  She stands above the sink secreted in

  the laundry-room (where her man will never

  seek her out) and coats the strands with stinking

  ammonia-scented creams that set while

  she sorts the dirty clothes and loads the old

  washer. Florida light (constantly spring-

  like) pours through the blue glass vases lining

  the sill. This is her room, more than bedroom,

  where Popie piles his guns; or the lounge, where

  she cleans, but never sits. She wouldn’t dream

  of doing this in their shared bathroom. She

  thinks of this as her time. Her sole selfish

  pleasure: making herself beautiful for

  him. The washer chugs and sloshes, spreading

  soap suds. She rinses the dye down the drain,

  a dark, stinking spiral, drags a wide-toothed

  pink comb (hers since the 50s) through darkened

  curls, selects her scissors and starts snipping.

  BETHANY W. POPE

  Bowled, again

  Please cut my hair so that I look like

  me, but with shorter hair – and can you do this

  without me trying to describe what it is

  that I expect to see when I next dry my hair –

  for the polite gene in me knots grimly in curls

  to your scissors and even if it’s scrimshaw

  on a grand scale and even if I go home

  and wash my hair ten times to get rid

  of the belted Galloway in the mirror,

  I will still leave you a g
enerous tip.

  And what’s more, come back

  in a month or so as if I am a goldfish.

  KRISTINA CLOSE

  And then he said: When did your arms get so big?

  Oh honeybunch, they’re not big,

  they’re fat – and every wibbly inch

  a rich memory card. This quarter turn

  under the left arm, this alabaster,

  is the Boston pie last summer,

  strident and merciless

  and this by my elbow

  is the most perfect jam doughnut

  I ever had, its sugar curtain

  parting, the command performance

  stroking my tongue,

  its belly dancer middle

  jewelled and shadow dancing

  with my teeth.

  But this here, this favour under my arm

  was the perfect cream eclair –

  oh my dear, the parting of the slice

  and pastry, a thousand naked

  wind blown men running bobbly

  through the lawns of the National Trust

  in Surrey, the ladies in the kitchen

  pressing, pressing, into the dough.

  KRISTINA CLOSE

  High school

  Better than the fractions like weird pictograms,

  better than Othello’s major themes, the queens

  and kings of Scotland down the years,

  titration, verbs in conjugation tables

  you can still recite – the sound let out

  before the thought’s complete – Je suis.

  Tu est. Il est. Elle est. What you learned best

  was the fact of your disgustingness.

  How vile you were. Your every flaw:

  the monstrous, speckled thighs that brimmed

  from gym shorts, ringed with red elastic welts

  and howled down in the changing rooms.

  The shoes: too flat, too high

  you slattern, too gum-soled and scuffed,

  or not enough. The hairstyle that your Mum

  still cut; your Mum; the blush of rage

  or shame that spread routinely up

  your neck. Your ugly neck. Your neck,

  never adorned with friendship beads or, later,

  hickies. Your score of same; of love-notes

  passed to you in class, slow-dances, gropings,

  fucks – all zero – kept with everyone’s for broadcast

  in the midst of something good, the way

  a dying rock-star breaks the evening news.

  It’s women who learn first the throw that hurts,

  the way to really wound your fellow girl,

  the soft parts where it doesn’t show

  and cannot heal. How did these blue-eyed whippets

  learn so much of power and spite in years

  you’d spent just grooming dolls and waiting,

  fanning gravel out behind your bike’s

  bald, beaded, tinkling wheels?

  The worst thing: they believed it all,

  the tiny hierarchies built and smashed

  at rum-and-cola parties you were never party to.

  They thought that life would always hold

  the door for them, or for their looks, their smart

  high-kicks – did it matter which? – and you’d always be

  some chubby joke. You believed it too.

  The softest part of you believes it now.

  CLAIRE ASKEW

  Utility Room

  The air was thick,

  it reminded me of my utility room

  on cold December mornings

  where my mother stood in the doorway

  a trembling cigarette in one hand

  and a tear stained tissue in the other.

  He stared at his computer screen

  blatantly avoiding eye contact,

  he made jokes

  but he did not laugh,

  and tried to smile

  but found he couldn’t,

  he asked me if I ever harm myself;

  what an open question,

  we all harm ourselves in one way or another,

  we all drag our bedsheets around the house

  dank with the smell of expectation,

  filled with our uncertainties

  and our dark

  haunting desires;

  to not be alone,

  to not be alone any more,

  ‘do you?’ he persisted,

  I gave a little laugh,

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  PHOEBE WINSTANLEY

  Marks

  Shadiya just slides her sleeve up

  ‘I wanted to tell you about these.’

  And Nawal wears her shirts short

  Her dancer’s arms marked in red grid lines

  Today covered and crossed over

  With luminous green graffiti.

  And me, me I come home and bite my thumb

  Bite my palm

  Bite my wrist

  Tooth marks like a sweet candy bracelet

  The imprint of incisors

  My alligator skull.

  It breaks my heart that they’re only twelve

  But I mock myself, at almost thirty,

  For still being here.

  What, then, is the optimum age

  To cut, to break?

  I sit on panels where professionals discuss copycat behaviour,

  A rash of disclosures from Year Eight.

  And I started after Amelia started, it’s true,

  After she slipped a craft knife from her hand luggage and begged me to hide it.

  After I went to look for her, wondering if she’d made it to her dreaded nightshift

  And found on top of silk throws and Swedish language magazines,

  A gorgeous wooden box, a deluxe set, artist’s blades.

  When the children come to me, each worrying about the other

  In their Noah’s Ark pairs, Shakespearean twins

  I say as they care for their friend they must care for themselves too.

  I read psychiatry journals, see those words – lacerate, mutilate, auto-aggression.

  Under ‘copycat’ these reasons are proposed:

  Awareness – that this is now on their ‘menu of options’,

  Attention-seeking, and a desire to belong.

  I do not want this panel of professionals to know.

  Our list of pupils under ‘serious concern’ – this is not a group to which I

  Wish to belong.

  I have no mastery over intolerable feelings.

  I am harming my sense of myself.

  LEAH WATT

  Good Friday

  It was the day I chopped off my own head

  and blundered around the kitchen.

  No eyes to see myself with

  I felt strangely at peace.

  The kitchen became an obstacle course

  but I touched heat and hollow,

  put my head in a pot to boil

  to still my breath and hush my tongue,

  and when I was tender and quiet

  I served my head up on white china:

  apple-mouthed and gristle-chinned,

  heard your delighted gasp.

  JULIA WEBB

  The Woman Who Talked to Her Teeth

  She’d had her teeth out in her teens.

  Lots of girls did it.

  Dentists were expensive:

  you got fitted with a false set

  before marriage and kids.

  What did she want with teeth?

  She’d still got a jagged scar

  where the neighbour’s dog

  had bitten her cheek.

  She didn’t even make bridesmaid.

  She kept her lips shut

  to hide the hole in her mouth.

  She ate the kind of food

  that slipped past her gums:

  gallons of soup and ice cream.

  They talked her into it for her Sixtieth. />
  False teeth were different now:

  pearly, better than real.

  She could have a perm, too.

  And a new party dress.

  She agreed, wanting the dress.

  But the teeth never went into her mouth.

  She’d lay them on the grass,

  jaws slightly open

  so they seemed to be smiling.

  Then she’d sit beside them

  (at a safe distance,

  in case they turned nasty)

  and tell them the stories

  she would have told her children.

  VICKI FEAVER

  Friendship

  I lay naked on the medical table

  his hand pressed up against my sternum,

  searching for the rhythmic thump of my heart.

  I feel no shame, no compunction.

  He sees my breasts in all their youthful glory,

  is touching them foreign from a lover.

  Chest bruised and turning to purple,

  he tells me to hold my breath.

  Whistling in the darkened room

  letting out a low, ‘Wow’.

  If we were making love, this would be climax.

  I look at the screen and watch the smooth walls of my heart pulse,

  He smiles at me and croons,

  ‘Has anyone ever told you

  that you have a beautiful mitral valve?

  I bet you get that all the time.’

  ‘Ya know – you’re the first.’

  Laughing, I stare at the ceiling

  savouring the compliment –

  at least my heart is beautiful.