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1. |
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THE CERTIFICATES
Mothers were not given space to write their occupations on UK birth certificates until 1984. Source: General Register Office
The registrar takes his pen, tips its freight
of permanent ink to write Poet in the space
that did not exist beside my mother’s name,
or my grandmother’s name. Those bloody,
sweat-drenched women sent back to hearth
and cradle, their skills cancelled, never known.
My mother had four children in a decade,
each certificate proving nothing but birth.
My lineage? Patriarchal: father/farmer,
father/journalist, a family’s passage from land
to desk, but my mother’s story of travel,
of being photographed, of earning in a day
what my father brought home in a week
was hushed. I watch the registrar write,
as my baby daughter cries at my chest,
and I’m thankful for her ringing lungs, this
primary deed, this sure beginning of her archive.
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2. |
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THE ARGENTINIAN RUGBY WOMEN
Defeat is certain.
But the Argentinian rugby women
put their minds
to being defeated with honour.
The terraces are filled only with relatives,
the match broadcast on a channel no one watches –
but the Argentinian mothers stand up and yell,
wave the national flag.
They’ve followed their daughters
to the other side of the world
knowing they wouldn’t get past the first round.
The Argentinian players display
el Sol de Mayo on their scrum caps
– their opponents tackle them without pity,
crushing them into the sludge.
The Argentinian mothers hold up:
they’ve dragged their husbands along,
the same men who’d refused to allow their daughters
to practise such a degrading sport.
The Argentinian mothers too
had disapproved at first.
Now they scream from the stand.
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3. |
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HEADSTRONG
I’m sorry catches in the throat
and bruises in that wavering
hesitation like a rock falling
back to earth. See how it curves
under the skin, twists and cuts
as it hugs the voice box.
I forgive sways like a tamarack—
hackmatack, red larch, juniper,
larix laricina—of the low-lands
with roots in cool mud and branches
in the soft air where we hold
the belief we are stronger than wind.
The end is as blue as slag and twice
as worthless. This is where I say
I never meant it, and this is where
you say it doesn’t matter anymore
because words are less than
clouds and leaves and stone.
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4. |
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SUGGESTIONS FOR LIVING, a cento
After Jessie Lendennie
Lay still, the sounds heard
the beginnings of comfort; feel
the sea on the wind, the fall-falling
of the wave riding the horizon
and the waves recede beyond the cliffs,
beyond the trees; rows upon rows,
filling their long trailing sacks; in the darkness,
the silence at the centre of the wind, the sound of rain.
In the dark, trace a circle around the willow
time the slowest of movements; fine rain
against thin glass, against hard stones
like so many broken children; grow
into Gypsy, Hobo, a child of rain;
know water as it seeps from sky,
from the heart; know the sharp light of sun
on bottles broken in the street.
The horizon is both this path and
the edge of the sea; and memory
is a fracturing, a breaking of light and dark
with an old dog who knows all the secret places
down the unpaved road to the calm bay;
become part of something sacred
salmon in a small stream that rolled
down to the beach, going home or starting out.
Believe in past lives; sit and wait
for everyone to come home
silver dogs in the sea, unhindered,
gazing down the valley to Liscannor, Lahinch
and the bay; walk the stones of Clahane:
romantic Ireland smells of soft wind;
move slowly among ghosts
whose bodies are anywhere
but here; lose place; follow another pack; maybe
take a wrong turn at the edge of the sea
as the last storm leaves again;
lay still, the night moved
past; brush wonder
as a child, fingers
tapping at windows;
reach out, softly moved.
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5. |
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NAMES
When we arrived on the island
the land had the same colour of the sky
so blue we thought
we were standing on the skin of the Earth.
On the road to the new house,
wild herbs and a yellow flower with a name
meaning the first: Primula, Linnaeus called it,
or the earliness of flowering or the immediate blossoming
after the disappearance of snow.
In the garden plants were waiting for the end of winter
pollens were embedded in the soil:
a prehistory of death recycling new beginnings;
a bulb in the clods had a raindrop on its folded green stem
an immortal trace made mortal by light.
We too adapted to dying back and regrowing the next season.
We got new names and a raindrop folded in the mind,
a memory keeper in the planet archive
the ultimate cell beyond names
a survivor embryo moving between worlds
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6. |
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AY DE MI
In the version my abuela told me,
she had taken a lover,
or maybe she was a widow,
on the prowl for a new husband.
In either case,
she had to get rid of her children
to please a man.
This we understood.
We knew about our mothers and their boyfriends.
Even the ones that became step-fathers
could never really see us as theirs.
Be good, or La Llorona will get you.
We could imagine it all so easily,
our little barrio by the river.
In every version,
there is always a body of water,
there is always a drowning.
This we understood as well.
Our grandfathers had crossed a river;
that’s why they called us wetbacks.
We understood the borders
between life and not-life,
how they must be drawn
in water and breath.
Now, her restless spirit
searches endlessly
for children, calling,
¿Dónde están mis hijos?
When modern Medeas made the news,
we knew them for what they were.
Then one night, I heard it, too,
the crying.
Terrified, I hid under the covers.
My mother told me, It’s just a story,
and the sound you heard—
it was just mourning doves.
But mourning doves don’t sing at night.
If you hear La Llorona, run the other way.
Later, I realized I must have heard
a real woman crying,
those old houses built
within arm’s length of each other,
open windows in the summer meant
we could hear everything
going on next door
and I didn’t know a single woman
on the block
that didn’t have
a reason to weep.
In some versions,
it was an act of mercy.
She’d rather see her children dead
than destitute,
bereft of love.
Now that I am a woman
who has shed her share of tears,
I understand the wandering fog,
and making choices each
more damned
than the last.
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7. |
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TWO GIRLS PEELING APPLES
The sky of 5.47PM takes up a saffron rhythm
and the horizon is fading tiger stripes
all around our heads. The first of the evening’s
moths welcome-dance against the porch light
and we craft something without words or hands.
Spanish speakers like to call it crepúscolo,
but as with all beautiful things, the mood is
untranslatable, slippery language, a sensation
we share across the ebbing gap between us,
a nod of acknowledgement. We press bodies
as we peel the last of the apples, their turning,
twisting skin falling into the shared bucket
at our feet with a satisfying thwup.
Who would build heaven, when this space exists?
Where I can recount the story of Hi’iaka and Hopoe
at the point their myth diverges; they reconcile and
everything is held tight by superseding death, and
your knee kisses mine with multiple intent.
You nod at the right places without really listening,
your superhero skill, content in the knowledge
that you will hear it again, receiving my touch,
returning it with promise.
The evening stretches out infinite and fluid.
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8. |
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9. |
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HAVEN
Deer lightfoot across a clearing into shadowed trees.
Dogs turn the flock widdershins, for home.
Against the sky: homing crows.
We remember windows shut tight,
a birch tree, ink on bark paper,
twig broom, raft pole, cradlebones.
A plane snarls overhead,
two geese gust, honking off the lake,
ripples shudder ashore.
It lasts as long as the dream.
And after?
Deepwater lull of the island in the harbour.
When the wars have ended:
then.
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10. |
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WE START WITH THE SKIN
We see first, think
How obvious it is. Then,
how much it gives away
How it becomes
terrain, shaping as we move
maps of lines
coded in creases and scars
How it reveals
the ridges of twisting
bones veering off, and
There is a blossoming of red mouths
across my stomach
mumbling snide remarks
that make me squirm in my clothes
all day
There is a fever that comes and goes all night
even my forearms sweat
And I try to make friends with it
these growing pains
this shutting down
what freedoms it will bring
what dreams will come
what dreams will be overcome
secrets etched on a flake of dandruff
As a consequence of the story—
telling, drama happens
everything falls apart
but not away:
I am a raven’s nest
of shiny odds and ends
buttons that close nothing
attach no intensions, make no mistake
I am a loose gathering
of loose talents
in a tackle box in my granddaughter’s crafts room
and she will piece something together
a framework
a new skin to hold it all together
for a new, little while from her perspective
of what was my body in the world
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11. |
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HOUSE OF MIRRORS
I’m now the old bag from No. 5,
deliverer of perfectly worded missiles
of passive aggression over parking spots.
Front-liner in this inter-generational war,
I look up from my probiotic grains
only to be curdled by a glance from
the go-to-work youngster from number 1a
who has to walk 50 yards further to her car.
I can’t see that she is me, 30 years ago;
can’t get beyond my envy
at that resting bitch face
of perfect potential.
She can’t see that I am her
if she waits long enough.
She won’t feel the time pass
in that quantum leap
till she’s looking out
of a suburban window
over gluten free oats.
And neither of us can see
a mother on her Cailleach chair,
immersed in photographs,
staring long enough to see figures move,
hear voices from the past,
which is present for her,
and for you and me,
if we just wait long enough.
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12. |
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$600
Here for $600 you can buy
a purebred Siberian Husky pup
a digital display microwave
a proheat all rounder vacuum
a freestanding cooker
a mini laptop
a man's bike barely used
There for $600 you can buy
a 12 year-old girl not used at all
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13. |
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PARALLEL
Fuelled by her inner alarm
she'd help me rise before dawn
find folded clothes resting by my bedside
eat breakfast waiting at the kitchen table
stepped out into air that still held night
like a child in its arms.
There'd be a crack in the sky
as we entered the loamy womb
of the mushroom house
emerging later -
as clothes from a tumble drier
creased but still wearable
backs aching into the white of morning
to sit in the break room hut
eat a cellophane wrapped lunch
I never saw her make -
salad cream baps, a chocolate biscuit
washed down with a mug of tea.
She'd leave me to school then
we'd meet again at home
where every surface gleamed
the kitchen floor always smelled
like the swimming pool
shimmering in sunlight I felt I could dive in.
Never once did she say we were broke
about to lose everything.
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14. |
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THE WOMEN WAKES UP
A simile of dusk
Uncovers the dew on the hills and
Presents itself to the woman’s eyes
Orange and blue specks are strewn across the mundane skies
As thrushes chirp at a distance
And temple bells dampen the sorrow-drums
The air is full with fragrant naïveté
Of yet-to-bloom jasmines
While the world sleeps in tranquil sobs
She rises to watch the golden ball
Climb the mountains and clouds
Trying to get a hold on the emptiness
That lies beyond it all
The yellow orb serves to reinstate
The faith in her dormant compassion
The faith that nothing stays forever in the dark
The faith that new beginnings have a tinsel arch
As she slips on bangles of responsibility
That nervously clank against one another
And give way to her ever-unheard full-throated voice
Her anxious desire to be seen and heard
Covers all the sand dunes in one embrace
And pine trees atop the hill reverberate
In storms of a cheerful rage
Turbulence amplifies as she
Absorbs and reflects
Assimilates and forgets
Imagines and creates
Summoning her sacred energies
And manifesting lofty towers of sunlight
Worlds and words of beauty and serendipity
Emerge and crumble to dust again
She imagines as she moves
She creates as she imagines
She loves as she creates
She illuminates as she loves
They have always found a twinkling tear
Lining the bottom of her left eye
Which has left an indelible footprint on the psyche of the Moon
Gazing noiselessly from a distance
Hardened over time
She has used the salinity of water to restore leaves
Of the tree of Life
From ignorance to bondage
She has borne it all
On her delicate strong shoulders
She has allowed streams of teardrops
To carry her to another realm of rationality
Forbearance is demanding
Forgiveness is demeaning
Colouring within the lines
She reveals the beauty of infinitude
The spaces between words of discord and non-compliance
Fill up with the colour of nothingness
Iridescent prisms of raindrops mingle
With teardrops of serendipity
That had once begrudgingly fallen from experienced irises
Joy explodes into a billion balls of love
Dewdrops moisten the grass she has walked on all her life
Freedom heaves a sigh of relief
Her feet give out
But a pair of wings emerges
Birds of hope rush to paint the firmament
Crystals of love spill in all directions
Illustrating fresh beliefs
Writing new stories
Creating and manifesting
Absorbing and reflecting
Evolving and evaporating
Dissolving and embracing
Refraining and collecting
Falling and rising
Pausing and moving
Untouched and unaltered
With effortless care
The woman wakes up
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15. |
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GIRLS ONLY
for Shell
We struck one – nothing.
We struck two and something –
Little pyro-poof!
Our hands huddled around it,
Wishing it.
We threw it down
On our dry leaf mound
And magic!
We had a secret.
Girls only –
Since we weren’t allowed in the boy’s den.
But out of our hands, it went wild
And our secret
Smoke-signaled
Above the trees
Tattle-telling.
Shell-shocked we rushed
To a plastic pool
And wrestled the water
Into the woods
But it slipped from our fingers
And fell short of help.
By the time we reached
A pail of rainwater, it was way too late.
We ran home red-handed
And phoned without giving our names.
The sirens came.
The shame lasted as long as
The charred circle remained.
First from our fingers,
Then out of our hands –
Let us learn:
Not too quick to prove.
Our power is within.
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16. |
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An audio anthology of poems to mark International Women's Day 2022.
The theme for IWD2022 is #BreakTheBias
Imagine a gender equal world.
A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination.
A world that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
A world where difference is valued and celebrated.
Together we can forge women's equality.
Collectively we can all #BreakTheBias.
www.internationalwomensday.com/theme
This album is offered as a pay-what-you-want download. You can get it for free; if you do wish to pay, all proceeds will go to the Ukranian Women's Fund, supporting women and girls in overcoming the consequences of Russian military aggression.
Each contribution will allow UWF to support women and girls who face humanitarian challenges caused by full-scale hostilities, as well as activists who are at the forefront of the volunteer movement and help those who need support the most.
The funds will be used to cover the urgent needs for water, food, medicine, hygiene, communication and other basic needs, with a focus on the most vulnerable groups of women and girls.
uwf.org.ua/en/donate/