Collected Poems, page 17
back alleys, mews, the churches and bridges, the parks,
the Underground stations, the grand hotels where Vita and Violet,
pin-ups of ours, had given it wallop. We stared from Hungerford Bridge
as the lights of London tarted up the old Thames. All right,
we made our mistakes in those early years. We were soft
when we should have been hard; enrolled a few girls
in the firm who were well out of order – two of them
getting Engaged; a third sneaking back up the Mile End Road
every night to be some plonker’s wife. Rule Number One –
A boyfriend’s for Christmas, not just for life.
But we learned – and our twenty-first birthday saw us installed
in the first of our clubs, Ballbreakers, just off
Evering Road. The word got around and about
that any woman in trouble could come to the Krays,
no questions asked, for Protection. We’d soon earned the clout
and the dosh and respect for a move, Piccadilly way,
to a classier gaff – to the club at the heart of our legend,
Prickteasers. We admit, bang to rights, that the fruits
of feminism – fact – made us rich, feared, famous,
friends of the stars. Have a good butcher’s at these –
there we for ever are in glamorous black-and-white,
assertively staring out next to Germaine, Bardot,
Twiggy and Lulu, Dusty and Yoko, Bassey, Babs,
Sandy, Diana Dors. And London was safer then
on account of us. Look at the letters we get –
Dear Twins, them were the Good Old Days when you ruled
the streets. There was none of this mugging old ladies
or touching young girls. We hear what’s being said.
Remember us at our peak, in our prime, dressed to kill
and swaggering in to our club, stroke of twelve,
the evening we’d leaned on Sinatra to sing for free.
There was always a bit of a buzz when we entered, stopping
at favoured tables, giving a nod or a wink, buying someone
a drink, lighting a fag, lending an ear. That particular night
something electric, trembling, blue, crackled the air. Leave us both there,
spotlit, strong, at the top of our world, with Sinatra drawling And here’s
a song for the twins, then opening her beautiful throat to take
it away. These boots are made for walking, and that’s
just what they’ll do. One of these days these boots
are gonna walk all over you. Are you ready, boots?
Start walkin’ . . .
Elvis’s Twin Sister
Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight?
Elvis is alive and she’s female: Madonna
In the convent, y’all,
I tend the gardens,
watch things grow,
pray for the immortal soul
of rock ’n’ roll.
They call me
Sister Presley here.
The Reverend Mother
digs the way I move my hips
just like my brother.
Gregorian chant
drifts out across the herbs,
Pascha nostrum immolatus est . . .
I wear a simple habit,
darkish hues,
a wimple with a novice-sewn
lace band, a rosary,
a chain of keys,
a pair of good and sturdy
blue suede shoes.
I think of it
as Graceland here,
a land of grace.
It puts my trademark slow lopsided smile
back on my face.
Lawdy.
I’m alive and well.
Long time since I walked
down Lonely Street
towards Heartbreak Hotel.
Pope Joan
After I learned to transubstantiate
unleavened bread
into the sacred host
and swung the burning frankincense
till blue-green snakes of smoke
coiled round the hem of my robe
and swayed through those fervent crowds,
high up in a papal chair,
blessing and blessing the air,
nearer to heaven
than cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests,
being Vicar of Rome,
having made the Vatican my home,
like the best of men,
in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti amen,
but twice as virtuous as them,
I came to believe
that I did not believe a word,
so I tell you now,
daughters or brides of the Lord,
that the closest I felt
to the power of God
was the sense of a hand
lifting me, flinging me down,
lifting me, flinging me down,
as my baby pushed out
from between my legs
where I lay in the road
in my miracle,
not a man or a pope at all.
Penelope
At first, I looked along the road
hoping to see him saunter home
among the olive trees,
a whistle for the dog
who mourned him with his warm head on my knees.
Six months of this
and then I noticed that whole days had passed
without my noticing.
I sorted cloth and scissors, needle, thread,
thinking to amuse myself,
but found a lifetime’s industry instead.
I sewed a girl
under a single star – cross-stitch, silver silk –
running after childhood’s bouncing ball.
I chose between three greens for the grass;
a smoky pink, a shadow’s grey
to show a snapdragon gargling a bee.
I threaded walnut brown for a tree,
my thimble like an acorn
pushing up through umber soil.
Beneath the shade
I wrapped a maiden in a deep embrace
with heroism’s boy
and lost myself completely
in a wild embroidery of love, lust, loss, lessons learnt;
then watched him sail away
into the loose gold stitching of the sun.
And when the others came to take his place,
disturb my peace,
I played for time.
I wore a widow’s face, kept my head down,
did my work by day, at night unpicked it.
I knew which hour of the dark the moon
would start to fray,
I stitched it.
Grey threads and brown
pursued my needle’s leaping fish
to form a river that would never reach the sea.
I tricked it. I was picking out
the smile of a woman at the centre
of this world, self-contained, absorbed, content,
most certainly not waiting,
when I heard a far-too-late familiar tread outside the door.
I licked my scarlet thread
and aimed it surely at the middle of the needle’s eye once more.
Mrs Beast
These myths going round, these legends, fairytales,
I’ll put them straight; so when you stare
into my face – Helen’s face, Cleopatra’s,
Queen of Sheba’s, Juliet’s – then, deeper,
gaze into my eyes – Nefertiti’s, Mona Lisa’s,
Garbo’s eyes – think again. The Little Mermaid slit
her shining, silver tail in two, rubbed salt
into that stinking wound, got up and walked,
in agony, in fishnet tights, stood up and smiled, waltzed,
all for a Prince, a pretty boy, a charming one
who’d dump her in the end, chuck her, throw her overboard.
I could have told her – look, love, I should know,
they’re bastards when they’re Princes.
What you want to do is find yourself a Beast. The sex
is better. Myself, I came to the House of the Beast
no longer a girl, knowing my own mind,
my own gold stashed in the bank,
my own black horse at the gates
ready to carry me off at one wrong word,
one false move, one dirty look.
But the Beast fell to his knees at the door
to kiss my glove with his mongrel lips – good –
showed by the tears in his bloodshot eyes
that he knew he was blessed – better –
didn’t try to conceal his erection,
size of a mule’s – best. And the Beast
watched me open, decant and quaff
a bottle of Château Margaux ’54,
the year of my birth, before he lifted a paw.
I’ll tell you more. Stripped of his muslin shirt
and his corduroys, he steamed in his pelt,
ugly as sin. He had the grunts, the groans, the yelps,
the breath of a goat. I had the language, girls.
The lady says Do this. Harder. The lady says
Do that. Faster. The lady says That’s not where I meant.
At last it all made sense. The pig in my bed
was invited. And if his snout and trotters fouled
my damask sheets, why, then, he’d wash them. Twice.
Meantime, here was his horrid leather tongue
to scour in between my toes. Here
were his hooked and yellowy claws to pick my nose,
if I wanted that. Or to scratch my back
till it bled. Here was his bullock’s head
to sing off-key all night where I couldn’t hear.
Here was a bit of him like a horse, a ram,
an ape, a wolf, a dog, a donkey, dragon, dinosaur.
Need I say more? On my Poker nights, the Beast
kept out of sight. We were a hard school, tough as fuck,
all of us beautiful and rich – the Woman
who Married a Minotaur, Goldilocks, the Bride
of the Bearded Lesbian, Frau Yellow Dwarf, et Moi.
I watched those wonderful women shuffle and deal –
Five and Seven Card Stud, Sidewinder, Hold ’Em, Draw –
I watched them bet and raise and call. One night,
a head-to-head between Frau Yellow Dwarf and Bearded’s Bride
was over the biggest pot I’d seen in my puff.
The Frau had the Queen of Clubs on the baize
and Bearded the Queen of Spades. Final card. Queen each.
Frau Yellow raised. Bearded raised. Goldilocks’ eyes
were glued to the pot as though porridge bubbled there.
The Minotaur’s wife lit a stinking cheroot. Me,
I noticed the Frau’s hand shook as she placed her chips.
Bearded raised her a final time, then stared,
stared so hard you felt your dress would melt
if she blinked. I held my breath. Frau Yellow
swallowed hard, then called. Sure enough, Bearded flipped
her Aces over; diamonds, hearts, the pubic Ace of Spades.
And that was a lesson learnt by all of us –
the drop-dead gorgeous Bride of the Bearded Lesbian didn’t bluff.
But behind each player stood a line of ghosts
unable to win. Eve. Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe.
Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair.
Bessie Smith unloved and down and out.
Bluebeard’s wives, Henry VIII’s, Snow White
cursing the day she left the seven dwarfs, Diana,
Princess of Wales. The sheepish Beast came in
with a tray of schnapps at the end of the game
and we stood for the toast – Fay Wray –
then tossed our fiery drinks to the back of our crimson throats.
Bad girls. Serious ladies. Mourning our dead.
So I was hard on the Beast, win or lose,
when I got upstairs, those tragic girls in my head,
turfing him out of bed; standing alone
on the balcony, the night so cold I could taste the stars
on the tip of my tongue. And I made a prayer –
thumbing my pearls, the tears of Mary, one by one,
like a rosary – words for the lost, the captive beautiful,
the wives, those less fortunate than we.
The moon was a hand-mirror breathed on by a Queen.
My breath was a chiffon scarf for an elegant ghost.
I turned to go back inside. Bring me the Beast for the night.
Bring me the wine-cellar key. Let the less-loving one be me.
Demeter
Where I lived – winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
to break the ice. My broken heart –
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers
to her mother’s house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon.
The Long Queen
The Long Queen couldn’t die.
Young when she bowed her head
for the cold weight of the crown, she’d looked
at the second son of the earl, the foreign prince,
the heir to the duke, the lord, the baronet, the count,
then taken Time for a husband. Long live the Queen.
What was she queen of? Women, girls,
spinsters and hags, matrons, wet nurses,
witches, widows, wives, mothers of all these.
Her word of law was in their bones, in the graft
of their hands, in the wild kicks of their dancing.
No girl born who wasn’t the Long Queen’s always child.
Unseen, she ruled and reigned; some said
in a castle, some said in a tower in the dark heart
of a wood, some said out and about in rags, disguised,
sorting the bad from the good. She sent her explorers away
in their creaking ships and was queen of more, of all the dead
when they lived if they did so female. All hail to the Queen.
What were her laws? Childhood: whether a girl
awoke from the bad dream of the worst, or another
swooned into memory, bereaved, bereft, or a third one
wrote it all down like a charge-sheet, or the fourth never left,
scouring the markets and shops for her old books and toys –
no girl growing who wasn’t the apple of the Long Queen’s eye.
Blood: proof, in the Long Queen’s colour,
royal red, of intent; the pain when a girl
first bled to be insignificant, no cause for complaint,
and this to be monthly, linked to the moon, till middle age
when the law would change. Tears: salt pearls, bright jewels
for the Long Queen’s fingers to weigh as she counted their sorrow.
Childbirth: most to lie on the birthing beds,
push till the room screamed scarlet and children
bawled and slithered into their arms, sore flowers;
some to be godmother, aunt, teacher, teller of tall tales,
but all who were there to swear that the pain was worth it.
No mother bore daughter not named to honour the Queen.
And her pleasures were stories, true or false,
that came in the evening, drifting up on the air
to the high window she watched from, confession
or gossip, scandal or anecdote, secrets, her ear tuned
to the light music of girls, the drums of women, the faint strings
of the old. Long Queen. All her possessions for a moment of time.
The Map-Woman
A woman’s skin was a map of the town
where she’d grown from a child.
When she went out, she covered it up
with a dress, with a shawl, with a hat,
with mitts or a muff, with leggings, trousers
or jeans, with an ankle-length cloak, hooded
and fingertip-sleeved. But – birthmark, tattoo –
the A-Z street-map grew, a precise second skin,
broad if she binged, thin when she slimmed,
a precis of where to end or go back or begin.
Over her breast was the heart of the town,
from the Market Square to the Picture House
by way of St Mary’s Church, a triangle
of alleys and streets and walks, her veins
like shadows below the lines of the map, the river
an artery snaking north to her neck. She knew
if you crossed the bridge at her nipple, took a left
and a right, you would come to the graves,
the grey-haired teachers of English and History,
the soldier boys, the Mayors and Councillors,
the beloved mothers and wives, the nuns and priests,
their bodies fading into the earth like old print
on a page. You could sit on a wooden bench
as a wedding pair ran, ringed, from the church,
confetti skittering over the marble stones,
the big bell hammering hail from the sky, and wonder
who you would marry and how and where and when
you would die; or find yourself in the coffee house
nearby, waiting for time to start, your tiny face
trapped in the window’s bottle-thick glass like a fly.
And who might you see, short-cutting through
the Grove to the Square – that line there, the edge
of a fingernail pressed on her flesh – in the rain,
leaving your empty cup, to hurry on after
calling their name? When she showered, the map
gleamed on her skin, blue-black ink from a nib.
She knew you could scoot down Greengate Street,
huddling close to the High House, the sensible shops,
the Swan Hotel, till you came to the Picture House,
sat in the musty dark watching the Beatles
the Underground stations, the grand hotels where Vita and Violet,
pin-ups of ours, had given it wallop. We stared from Hungerford Bridge
as the lights of London tarted up the old Thames. All right,
we made our mistakes in those early years. We were soft
when we should have been hard; enrolled a few girls
in the firm who were well out of order – two of them
getting Engaged; a third sneaking back up the Mile End Road
every night to be some plonker’s wife. Rule Number One –
A boyfriend’s for Christmas, not just for life.
But we learned – and our twenty-first birthday saw us installed
in the first of our clubs, Ballbreakers, just off
Evering Road. The word got around and about
that any woman in trouble could come to the Krays,
no questions asked, for Protection. We’d soon earned the clout
and the dosh and respect for a move, Piccadilly way,
to a classier gaff – to the club at the heart of our legend,
Prickteasers. We admit, bang to rights, that the fruits
of feminism – fact – made us rich, feared, famous,
friends of the stars. Have a good butcher’s at these –
there we for ever are in glamorous black-and-white,
assertively staring out next to Germaine, Bardot,
Twiggy and Lulu, Dusty and Yoko, Bassey, Babs,
Sandy, Diana Dors. And London was safer then
on account of us. Look at the letters we get –
Dear Twins, them were the Good Old Days when you ruled
the streets. There was none of this mugging old ladies
or touching young girls. We hear what’s being said.
Remember us at our peak, in our prime, dressed to kill
and swaggering in to our club, stroke of twelve,
the evening we’d leaned on Sinatra to sing for free.
There was always a bit of a buzz when we entered, stopping
at favoured tables, giving a nod or a wink, buying someone
a drink, lighting a fag, lending an ear. That particular night
something electric, trembling, blue, crackled the air. Leave us both there,
spotlit, strong, at the top of our world, with Sinatra drawling And here’s
a song for the twins, then opening her beautiful throat to take
it away. These boots are made for walking, and that’s
just what they’ll do. One of these days these boots
are gonna walk all over you. Are you ready, boots?
Start walkin’ . . .
Elvis’s Twin Sister
Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight?
Elvis is alive and she’s female: Madonna
In the convent, y’all,
I tend the gardens,
watch things grow,
pray for the immortal soul
of rock ’n’ roll.
They call me
Sister Presley here.
The Reverend Mother
digs the way I move my hips
just like my brother.
Gregorian chant
drifts out across the herbs,
Pascha nostrum immolatus est . . .
I wear a simple habit,
darkish hues,
a wimple with a novice-sewn
lace band, a rosary,
a chain of keys,
a pair of good and sturdy
blue suede shoes.
I think of it
as Graceland here,
a land of grace.
It puts my trademark slow lopsided smile
back on my face.
Lawdy.
I’m alive and well.
Long time since I walked
down Lonely Street
towards Heartbreak Hotel.
Pope Joan
After I learned to transubstantiate
unleavened bread
into the sacred host
and swung the burning frankincense
till blue-green snakes of smoke
coiled round the hem of my robe
and swayed through those fervent crowds,
high up in a papal chair,
blessing and blessing the air,
nearer to heaven
than cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests,
being Vicar of Rome,
having made the Vatican my home,
like the best of men,
in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti amen,
but twice as virtuous as them,
I came to believe
that I did not believe a word,
so I tell you now,
daughters or brides of the Lord,
that the closest I felt
to the power of God
was the sense of a hand
lifting me, flinging me down,
lifting me, flinging me down,
as my baby pushed out
from between my legs
where I lay in the road
in my miracle,
not a man or a pope at all.
Penelope
At first, I looked along the road
hoping to see him saunter home
among the olive trees,
a whistle for the dog
who mourned him with his warm head on my knees.
Six months of this
and then I noticed that whole days had passed
without my noticing.
I sorted cloth and scissors, needle, thread,
thinking to amuse myself,
but found a lifetime’s industry instead.
I sewed a girl
under a single star – cross-stitch, silver silk –
running after childhood’s bouncing ball.
I chose between three greens for the grass;
a smoky pink, a shadow’s grey
to show a snapdragon gargling a bee.
I threaded walnut brown for a tree,
my thimble like an acorn
pushing up through umber soil.
Beneath the shade
I wrapped a maiden in a deep embrace
with heroism’s boy
and lost myself completely
in a wild embroidery of love, lust, loss, lessons learnt;
then watched him sail away
into the loose gold stitching of the sun.
And when the others came to take his place,
disturb my peace,
I played for time.
I wore a widow’s face, kept my head down,
did my work by day, at night unpicked it.
I knew which hour of the dark the moon
would start to fray,
I stitched it.
Grey threads and brown
pursued my needle’s leaping fish
to form a river that would never reach the sea.
I tricked it. I was picking out
the smile of a woman at the centre
of this world, self-contained, absorbed, content,
most certainly not waiting,
when I heard a far-too-late familiar tread outside the door.
I licked my scarlet thread
and aimed it surely at the middle of the needle’s eye once more.
Mrs Beast
These myths going round, these legends, fairytales,
I’ll put them straight; so when you stare
into my face – Helen’s face, Cleopatra’s,
Queen of Sheba’s, Juliet’s – then, deeper,
gaze into my eyes – Nefertiti’s, Mona Lisa’s,
Garbo’s eyes – think again. The Little Mermaid slit
her shining, silver tail in two, rubbed salt
into that stinking wound, got up and walked,
in agony, in fishnet tights, stood up and smiled, waltzed,
all for a Prince, a pretty boy, a charming one
who’d dump her in the end, chuck her, throw her overboard.
I could have told her – look, love, I should know,
they’re bastards when they’re Princes.
What you want to do is find yourself a Beast. The sex
is better. Myself, I came to the House of the Beast
no longer a girl, knowing my own mind,
my own gold stashed in the bank,
my own black horse at the gates
ready to carry me off at one wrong word,
one false move, one dirty look.
But the Beast fell to his knees at the door
to kiss my glove with his mongrel lips – good –
showed by the tears in his bloodshot eyes
that he knew he was blessed – better –
didn’t try to conceal his erection,
size of a mule’s – best. And the Beast
watched me open, decant and quaff
a bottle of Château Margaux ’54,
the year of my birth, before he lifted a paw.
I’ll tell you more. Stripped of his muslin shirt
and his corduroys, he steamed in his pelt,
ugly as sin. He had the grunts, the groans, the yelps,
the breath of a goat. I had the language, girls.
The lady says Do this. Harder. The lady says
Do that. Faster. The lady says That’s not where I meant.
At last it all made sense. The pig in my bed
was invited. And if his snout and trotters fouled
my damask sheets, why, then, he’d wash them. Twice.
Meantime, here was his horrid leather tongue
to scour in between my toes. Here
were his hooked and yellowy claws to pick my nose,
if I wanted that. Or to scratch my back
till it bled. Here was his bullock’s head
to sing off-key all night where I couldn’t hear.
Here was a bit of him like a horse, a ram,
an ape, a wolf, a dog, a donkey, dragon, dinosaur.
Need I say more? On my Poker nights, the Beast
kept out of sight. We were a hard school, tough as fuck,
all of us beautiful and rich – the Woman
who Married a Minotaur, Goldilocks, the Bride
of the Bearded Lesbian, Frau Yellow Dwarf, et Moi.
I watched those wonderful women shuffle and deal –
Five and Seven Card Stud, Sidewinder, Hold ’Em, Draw –
I watched them bet and raise and call. One night,
a head-to-head between Frau Yellow Dwarf and Bearded’s Bride
was over the biggest pot I’d seen in my puff.
The Frau had the Queen of Clubs on the baize
and Bearded the Queen of Spades. Final card. Queen each.
Frau Yellow raised. Bearded raised. Goldilocks’ eyes
were glued to the pot as though porridge bubbled there.
The Minotaur’s wife lit a stinking cheroot. Me,
I noticed the Frau’s hand shook as she placed her chips.
Bearded raised her a final time, then stared,
stared so hard you felt your dress would melt
if she blinked. I held my breath. Frau Yellow
swallowed hard, then called. Sure enough, Bearded flipped
her Aces over; diamonds, hearts, the pubic Ace of Spades.
And that was a lesson learnt by all of us –
the drop-dead gorgeous Bride of the Bearded Lesbian didn’t bluff.
But behind each player stood a line of ghosts
unable to win. Eve. Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe.
Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair.
Bessie Smith unloved and down and out.
Bluebeard’s wives, Henry VIII’s, Snow White
cursing the day she left the seven dwarfs, Diana,
Princess of Wales. The sheepish Beast came in
with a tray of schnapps at the end of the game
and we stood for the toast – Fay Wray –
then tossed our fiery drinks to the back of our crimson throats.
Bad girls. Serious ladies. Mourning our dead.
So I was hard on the Beast, win or lose,
when I got upstairs, those tragic girls in my head,
turfing him out of bed; standing alone
on the balcony, the night so cold I could taste the stars
on the tip of my tongue. And I made a prayer –
thumbing my pearls, the tears of Mary, one by one,
like a rosary – words for the lost, the captive beautiful,
the wives, those less fortunate than we.
The moon was a hand-mirror breathed on by a Queen.
My breath was a chiffon scarf for an elegant ghost.
I turned to go back inside. Bring me the Beast for the night.
Bring me the wine-cellar key. Let the less-loving one be me.
Demeter
Where I lived – winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
to break the ice. My broken heart –
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers
to her mother’s house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon.
The Long Queen
The Long Queen couldn’t die.
Young when she bowed her head
for the cold weight of the crown, she’d looked
at the second son of the earl, the foreign prince,
the heir to the duke, the lord, the baronet, the count,
then taken Time for a husband. Long live the Queen.
What was she queen of? Women, girls,
spinsters and hags, matrons, wet nurses,
witches, widows, wives, mothers of all these.
Her word of law was in their bones, in the graft
of their hands, in the wild kicks of their dancing.
No girl born who wasn’t the Long Queen’s always child.
Unseen, she ruled and reigned; some said
in a castle, some said in a tower in the dark heart
of a wood, some said out and about in rags, disguised,
sorting the bad from the good. She sent her explorers away
in their creaking ships and was queen of more, of all the dead
when they lived if they did so female. All hail to the Queen.
What were her laws? Childhood: whether a girl
awoke from the bad dream of the worst, or another
swooned into memory, bereaved, bereft, or a third one
wrote it all down like a charge-sheet, or the fourth never left,
scouring the markets and shops for her old books and toys –
no girl growing who wasn’t the apple of the Long Queen’s eye.
Blood: proof, in the Long Queen’s colour,
royal red, of intent; the pain when a girl
first bled to be insignificant, no cause for complaint,
and this to be monthly, linked to the moon, till middle age
when the law would change. Tears: salt pearls, bright jewels
for the Long Queen’s fingers to weigh as she counted their sorrow.
Childbirth: most to lie on the birthing beds,
push till the room screamed scarlet and children
bawled and slithered into their arms, sore flowers;
some to be godmother, aunt, teacher, teller of tall tales,
but all who were there to swear that the pain was worth it.
No mother bore daughter not named to honour the Queen.
And her pleasures were stories, true or false,
that came in the evening, drifting up on the air
to the high window she watched from, confession
or gossip, scandal or anecdote, secrets, her ear tuned
to the light music of girls, the drums of women, the faint strings
of the old. Long Queen. All her possessions for a moment of time.
The Map-Woman
A woman’s skin was a map of the town
where she’d grown from a child.
When she went out, she covered it up
with a dress, with a shawl, with a hat,
with mitts or a muff, with leggings, trousers
or jeans, with an ankle-length cloak, hooded
and fingertip-sleeved. But – birthmark, tattoo –
the A-Z street-map grew, a precise second skin,
broad if she binged, thin when she slimmed,
a precis of where to end or go back or begin.
Over her breast was the heart of the town,
from the Market Square to the Picture House
by way of St Mary’s Church, a triangle
of alleys and streets and walks, her veins
like shadows below the lines of the map, the river
an artery snaking north to her neck. She knew
if you crossed the bridge at her nipple, took a left
and a right, you would come to the graves,
the grey-haired teachers of English and History,
the soldier boys, the Mayors and Councillors,
the beloved mothers and wives, the nuns and priests,
their bodies fading into the earth like old print
on a page. You could sit on a wooden bench
as a wedding pair ran, ringed, from the church,
confetti skittering over the marble stones,
the big bell hammering hail from the sky, and wonder
who you would marry and how and where and when
you would die; or find yourself in the coffee house
nearby, waiting for time to start, your tiny face
trapped in the window’s bottle-thick glass like a fly.
And who might you see, short-cutting through
the Grove to the Square – that line there, the edge
of a fingernail pressed on her flesh – in the rain,
leaving your empty cup, to hurry on after
calling their name? When she showered, the map
gleamed on her skin, blue-black ink from a nib.
She knew you could scoot down Greengate Street,
huddling close to the High House, the sensible shops,
the Swan Hotel, till you came to the Picture House,
sat in the musty dark watching the Beatles
