Hallelujah for 50ft Women Read online

  Hand to heart, I laugh and laugh.

  CAITLIN BAGLEY

  Flesh

  Sitting in a doorway,

  in October sunlight,

  eating

  peppers, onions, tomatoes,

  stale bread sodden with olive oil –

  and the air high and clean,

  and the red taste of tomatoes,

  and the sharp bite of onions,

  and the pepper’s scarlet crunch –

  the body

  coming awake again,

  thinking,

  maybe there’s more to life than sickness,

  than the body’s craving for oblivion,

  than the hunger of the spirit to be gone –

  and maybe the body belongs in the world,

  maybe it knows a thing or two,

  maybe it’s even possible

  it may once more remember

  sweetness,

  absence of pain.

  KERRY HARDIE

  This Woman

  The moon pulls at me like a tide.

  On these winter nights, my bones feel brittle

  and my knees are sore from praying.

  By day I leave the cats with their backs to the fire.

  I try to forget about my body that feels like a house.

  The house I grew up in because it’s always so cold.

  I dream of eels and believe I can feel a pair

  of warm hands around my girth but they evaporate when I wake.

  The locals lay branches of mountain ash on my doorstep.

  A Wicklow man instructs me to urinate outside

  for the blood to flow, cover every blade of grass, he says.

  My mother made me drink a pint of buttermilk

  and as she does, I wonder if my salt-skin will ever feel quickening.

  NICOLA DALY

  Embarrassed

  I thought it was okay, I could understand the reasons.

  They said, ‘There might be a man or a nervous child seeing

  this small piece of flesh that they weren’t quite expecting.’

  So I whispered and tiptoed with nervous discretion.

  But after six months of her life sat sitting on lids,

  sipping on milk, nostrils sniffing on piss

  trying not to bang her head on toilet roll dispensers

  I wonder whether these public loo feeds offend her

  because I’m getting tired of discretion and being polite

  as my baby’s first sips are drowned drenched in shite

  I spent the first feeding months of her beautiful life

  feeling nervous and awkward and wanting everything right.

  Surrounded by family till I stepped out the house

  it took me eight weeks to get the confidence to go into town.

  Now the comments around me cut like a knife

  as I rush into toilet cubicles feeling nothing like nice.

  Because I’m giving her milk that’s not in a bottle

  wishing the cocaine generation white powder would topple

  I see pyramid sales pitches across our green globe

  and female breasts – banned – unless they’re out just for show.

  And the more I go out, the more I can’t stand it

  I walk into town, feel I’m surrounded by bandits,

  because in this country of billboards, covered in tits

  and family newsagent magazines full of it

  W.H. Smith top shelves out for men

  Why don’t you complain about them then?

  In this country of billboards, covered in tits

  and family newsagent magazines full of it

  W.H. Smith top shelves out for men

  I’m getting embarrassed in case

  a small flash of flesh might offend.

  And I’m not trying to parade it

  I don’t want to make a show

  but when I’m told I’d be better just staying at home

  and when another friend I know is thrown off a bus

  and another mother told to get out of a pub

  even my grandma said that maybe I was sexing it up.

  And I’m sure the milk-makers love all this fuss

  all the cussing, and worry, and looks of disgust

  as another mother turns from nipples to powder

  ashamed or embarrassed by the comments around her

  and as I hold her head up and pull my cardie across

  and she sips on that liquor made from everyone’s God

  I think, For God’s Sake, Jesus drank it

  So did Siddhartha, Muhammad, and Moses

  and both of their fathers

  Ganesh, and Shiva and Brigit and Buddha

  and I’m sure they weren’t doing it sniffing on piss

  as their mothers sat embarrassed on cold toilet lids

  in a country of billboards covered in tits

  in a country of low-cut tops, cleavage and skin

  in a country of cloth bags and recycling bins

  and as I desperately try to take all of this in

  I hold her head up, I can’t get my head round the anger

  towards us and not to the sound of lorries

  off-loading formula milk

  into countries where water runs dripping in filth,

  in towns where breasts are oases of life

  now dried up in two-for-one offers, enticed by labels

  and logos and gold standard rights

  claiming breast milk is healthier powdered and white,

  packaged and branded and sold at a price,

  so that nothing is free in this money-fuelled life

  which is fine if you need it or prefer to use bottles

  where water is clean and bacteria boiled

  but in towns where they drown in pollution and sewage

  bottled kids die and they knew that they’d do it,

  in towns where pennies are savoured like sweets

  we’re now paying for one thing that’s always been free,

  in towns empty of hospital beds, babies die,

  diarrhoea-fuelled, that breastmilk would end.

  So no more will I sit on these cold toilet lids

  no matter how embarrassed I feel as she sips

  because in this country of billboards, covered in tits

  I think we should try to get used to this.

  HOLLIE McNISH

  For Lucy

  If you are a woman, you are allowed

  to write about wombs, your relationship

  with your mother, your lover leaving, your

  lover leaving with your mother, wombless,

  and the way you feel about your wombless

  mother-loving bastard child. Period.

  You may do so in lyric utterance

  only. Moon images crowd the work like

  a lunar eclipse, and if you can get

  Aphrodite in or post-Freudian

  metaphor, they’ll call your power female.

  But what if you’re rubbish at ironing

  analogies. What if your speakers want

  to, well, speak instead of singing. Voices

  loud and raucous and – face it, babe – more

  like the birds you find in prose. Ah, that makes

  them prosaic. Women fucking, cursing

  their way through blank verse, scrunching handfuls of

  post-partum skin and plugging holes that won’t

  shrink back to size. Coating their lungs cosy

  with fags, drinking neat scotch of a Wednesday,

  eating crusty fig rolls with tuna straight

  from the tin and spilling the oil on their

  best work top. We’d best not write about them.

  So we’ll diet off this too-too flesh, and

  moon over growing things and baby’s smiles.

  Try to remember to hate our mothers

  or to claim sisterhood with their bloody

  wiles. We’ll stick our fingers in our
ears in

  case the odd fuck or you’re having a laugh

  gets through. Commune with fertile soil (even

  though, quite frankly, these hands are raw and clapped

  with scrubbing them one hundred times a day),

  and milk our tits – no, teats, I’m sorry – for

  what they might be trying to say. Curdled

  body-words. Not able to look in a

  mirror. Not able to look. Bloated with

  body-shame; anorectically eaten

  for breakfast. Ironically rhyming moon

  with June. Not able to look. Not able.

  If you leave off one s, wombless becomes

  Wombles.

  CARON FREEBORN

  Room 204 (Double for Single Use)

  This is the room of tongues,

  their busy pink-on-pink textures:

  rose plush, plum chintz, the tiles

  in the bathroom as marbled

  as their meat when spiced and tinned.

  Look at the placement of mirrors:

  the wall-sized gilt affair alongside

  the pilastered bed, swallows

  the room in its gold-lipped mouth

  and returns it redder and less itself.

  Most of all it is not from the bed

  but beside the bed, that you note

  someone has angled an oval glass

  on the mahogany chest of drawers

  so you see your pear-shape precisely

  from the back as you climb

  onto the high mattress. An unordinary

  thing: that candid peach-satin-framed

  rear view. Intimate for single use,

  you claim this tanless, tapered skin.

  All the kittens’ rough tongues

  are talking at once under the black beams

  like a ship creaking its timbers

  as you dip and swim in the watery

  fetch between mirror and mirror.

  JUDY BROWN

  Pair Bond

  The talk in the bar lulls a half-time fill:

  as I knife-scrape the head from another pint,

  he hovers, pocket-foothering his change.

  Steadying for the ask, he addresses

  my full frontals, my baby buggy bumpers,

  my Brad Pitts, my boulders, my billabongs,

  my squashy cushions, my soft-focus bristols,

  my motherly bosoms, my matronly bulk,

  my Mickey and Minnie, my Monica

  Lewinskys, my Isaac Newtons,

  my snow tyres, my speed bumps, my Tweedle twins,

  my milk makers, my Mobutus, my num-nums,

  my Pia Zadoras, my Pointer Sisters,

  my honkers, my hooters, my hubcaps, my hummers,

  my Eartha Kitts, my Eisenhowers,

  my God’s milk bottles, my Picasso cubes,

  my chesticles, my cha-chas, my coconuts,

  my dairy pillows, my devil’s dumplings,

  my objectified orbs, my über-boobs,

  my one-parts Lara, my two-parts globe,

  my skyward pips, my lift and separate,

  my airbags, my feeders, my mammy glands,

  my Bob and Ray, my big bouncing Buddhas,

  my sweater stretchers, my sweet potatoes,

  my rosaceous rotors, my trusty rivets,

  my melliferous melons, my mau-maus,

  my tarty, my taut, my pert palookas,

  my jahoobies, my kicking kawangas,

  my agravic gobstoppers, my immodest maids,

  my Scooby snacks, my squished-in shlobes,

  my cupcakes, my soda bread, my bloomin’ baps,

  my brilliant bangers, my brash bazookas,

  my windscreen wipers, my Winnebagos,

  my wopbopaloubop bopbapaloos,

  my yahoos, my yazoos and yipping yin-yangs,

  my paps, my pips, my pommes-de-terres,

  my pushed-up, plunged-down, paraded balcony,

  my slow reveal, my instant appeal,

  my décolletage, my fool’s mirage,

  and I watch him pay up, steady up and leave.

  BARBARA SMITH

  The Beast Is Dead, Long Live the Beast

  It was the difference between us that got me at first

  it was vast, unambiguous. He held me as if I were glass,

  saw mere delicacy as I sharpened my blade for the feast,

  eyeing his girth like a wife at the butchers. ‘All of you,’

  I thought, ‘I want all of you.’ He watched with a soft look.

  I preferred the smashed crystal, the roars, or nights

  I heard whelps, spied blood on his loose gums, remorse

  on his muzzle. He presumed I was sweet, a double-centred

  chocolate treat, longing for my own breed, not something

  entirely different. Then, oh hell, he told me.

  True love’s vow will break this curse.

  I took a scented soak, pondered his request. Recalled

  how I saddled his back, toured the estate, my knuckles

  white on matted fur, my womb tumbling, tumbling…

  He sighed and paced, till the third morning, on which

  he collapsed as if shot, his light almost out. It’s now or never.

  I had a smoke, considered…his eyes would remain the same

  and those howls, they came from within. ‘Truly,’ I said, just

  in the nick, ‘I love this beast and promise to be his.’

  Fur smouldered to reveal fine skin, smooth limbs, a face

  as pretty as my own. I couldn’t watch. It was grotesque. I left

  the prince to admire his pale fingers, a pleased tilt to his lips.

  In the woods, I got lost. Galloped for hours, for days

  devoured small creatures, tossed sour entrails to the fox.

  Circled. Didn’t rest. Beast, where was my beast?

  How I missed his stride, his tattered fur, his terrible voice.

  I swore to die before sacrificing life to that, that pretty boy.

  In the end, he trapped me.

  Mister Ruby Rings, Pointed Slippers fetched a posse

  twelve hounds, and a net. Looked at me as if we never

  sweat in the dark, tore the moon, swallowed stars…

  I masquerade till my escape. It’s easier by day.

  When I dream I wake with blood on my dress.

  The house frowns. Stone Venus is contemptuous

  the bitch. He awaits an answer to his latest request.

  Marriage. ‘Bite me baby,’ I hiss.

  NIAMH BOYCE

  For Her, a Different Skin

  Given the right blade, he might knife her.

  Not for fox pelt sleekness, or rabbit warmth.

  Hang legs from a rafter, limbs parted.

  Not for the lush flush of raw pain.

  Unseam a red circle; cut deeper.

  Not for a bitter scream’s squeezed juice.

  Slice the underside, finger it from bone.

  For the guts’ intricacies, untangled.

  Slide away cartilage, loose from flesh.

  For the pulsed butterflies, released.

  Free intergluing membrane, slowly unsplice.

  For the cracked almond heart, relieved.

  Glide hand between, peel from carcass.

  In hope of finding skin which fits,

  without snicking any arteries.

  SARAH JAMES

  Refined to bone

  Mirror mirror on the wall

  I want my body curves

  refined to bone.

  A little more discipline

  more fruit, less fat

  will make me all

  I ever wanted.

  Six stone and losing.

  Still too fleshy, slack.

  Protruding organs spoil the line

  like bra straps, ugly

  through a cotton top.

  Five stone, ten.

  At certain angles I can like myself

  but turn t
his way and still

  I see the pulse corrupt the skin,

  the swollen shape of womb.

  My monthlies stopped three pounds ago.

  Five stone, three.

  These doctors cannot keep me

  from my target. Nearly there.

  Only you I trust, my

  mirror mirror on the wall.

  You’ll see me pure

  refined to bone.

  JEAN GILL

  Unmade

  My art is not refined –

  pleasing to the eye like

  the still-life

  gape of a Vermeer maid. I don’t

  coax paint into golden sunrises.

  Tracey has big tits and comes

  (on her own terms)

  from Margate.

  My body blinks neon

  in a cycle of open

  and closed

  signs through cracked glass.

  Spontaneity can never be

  considered a genuine mode

  of artistry. Emin uses pop culture

  strategy –

  a certain native cunning.

  My bed is the last punch

  on a Margate street

  after a 3 a.m. lock-in –

  blood spilling over the frame

  of my B-list set.

  Emin’s a woman artist

  who fucks –

  a lot.

  My sheets are the damp heat from my body

  after sex, the wet wreck-

  age, how it freezes

  into week-old stains –

  yellow and gathering dust-