Hallelujah for 50ft Women

by Raving Beauties

  (for myself)

  Now I am sixty

  an upstart planet:

  my reeling centre of gravity

  wrung from its axis,

  has steeled itself,

  squared the circle

  of rearrangements;

  freshly-ruched with non-familiars,

  wrangling shapes;

  sharps, flats

  and untoned naturals,

  key changements?

  Ageing pictures

  held to the light

  make me smile;

  there’s nothing in these old nostalgias,

  landslides, appliquéd words in black and white;

  here and here, an interval,

  a few remembered notes become accordant

  shades of former wrongs

  and right:

  Ricking joints and ligaments just about get along,

  they snag and snip, gone for a song;

  I am a new map, a stand-up routine;

  less hip, more fool than cool,

  and hair, my dear, must surely, now,

  be for the chop? I have been

  most carefully

  advised to get a crop,

  so, from now on,

  mine, of course,

  will always,

  always be

  too long:

  Even so, I like me now

  I like this rimpling belly,

  these puckish, softly-sly unseasonals

  shaken rightlywrong:

  My newly-spannered hands

  broach their crinks and corrugates;

  I study this late-wrought mileage with esteem,

  fastidious veins, disciplines,

  process of an evident kind?

  It is as if Mozart and Schubert

  won’t replace Dylan and Aretha,

  but simply steepen abroad what these deft

  nerves and senses have altered, deepened

  and left behind.

  VICKY SCRIVENER

  Recognition

  Things get away from one.

  I’ve let myself go, I know.

  Children? I’ve had three

  and don’t even know them.

  I strain to remember a time

  when my body felt lighter.

  Years. My face is swollen

  with regrets. I put powder on,

  but it flakes off. I love him,

  through habit, but the proof

  has evaporated. He gets upset.

  I tried to do all the essentials

  on one trip. Foolish, yes,

  but I was weepy all morning.

  Quiche. A blond boy swung me up

  in his arms and promised the earth.

  You see, this came back to me

  as I stood on the scales.

  I wept. Shallots. In the window,

  creamy ladies held a pose

  which left me clogged and old.

  The waste. I’d forgotten my purse,

  fumbled; the shopgirl gaped at me,

  compassionless. Claret. I blushed.

  Cheese. Kleenex. It did happen.

  I lay in my slip on wet grass,

  laughing. Years. I had to rush out,

  blind in a hot flush, and bumped

  into an anxious, dowdy matron

  who touched the cold mirror

  and stared at me. Stared

  and said I’m sorry sorry sorry.

  CAROL ANN DUFFY

  Self-Portrait, Rear View

  At first I almost do not believe it, in the hotel

  triple mirror, that that is my body, in

  back, below the waist, and above

  the legs – the thing that doesn’t stop moving

  when I stop moving.

  And it doesn’t even look like just one thing,

  or even one big, double thing

  – even the word saddlebags has

  a smooth calfskin feel to it,

  compared to this compendium

  of net string bags shaking their booty of

  cellulite fruits and nuts. Some lumps

  look like bonbons translated intact

  from chocolate box to buttocks, the curl on top

  showing, slightly, through my skin. Once I see what I can

  do with this, I do it, high-stepping

  to make the rapids of my bottom rush

  in ripples like a world wonder. Slowly,

  I believe what I am seeing, a 54-year-old

  rear end, once a tight end,

  high and mighty, almost a chicken butt, now

  exhausted, as if tragic. But this is not

  an invasion, my cul-de-sac is not being

  used to hatch alien cells, bald peens,

  gyroscopes, sacks of marbles. It’s my hoard

  of treasure, my good luck, not to be

  dead, yet, though when I flutter

  the wings of my ass again, and see,

  in a clutch of eggs, each egg

  on its own, as if shell-less, shudder, I wonder

  if anyone has ever died

  looking in a mirror, of horror. I think I will not

  even catch a cold from it,

  I will go to school to it, to Butt

  Boot Camp, to the video store, where I saw,

  in the window, my hero, my workout jelly

  role model, my apotheosis: Killer Buns.

  SHARON OLDS

  Stella and Flavia

  Stella and Flavia, ev’ry hour,

  Unnumbered hearts surprise:

  In Stella’s soul lies all her pow’r,

  And Flavia’s, in her eyes.

  More boundless Flavia’s conquests are,

  And Stella’s more confined:

  All can discern a face that’s fair,

  But few a lovely mind.

  Stella, like Britain’s Monarch, reigns

  O’er cultivated lands;

  Like Eastern tyrants, Flavia deigns

  To rule o’er barren sands.

  Then boast, fair Flavia, boast your face,

  Your beauty’s only store:

  Your charms will ev’ry day decrease,

  Each day gives Stella more.

  MARY BARBER (c. 1690-1757)

  Longbarrow

  Beauty’s on the inside, so they say, but they don’t know –

  who can judge my clutch of soft and pulsing organs that

  pump – flux-stop-reflux – gouts of astonished blood

  in cyan and magenta round the scaffold

  of my bones, my meat and my dark caverns? Who’s to say

  these creamy glands, two butter beans in sanguine sauce,

  these devilled kidneys, dark as plums, my lover’s liver

  glistening like a deepsea conch, this duodenum,

  crinkled, damp and pocketed as purple wrack

  or the twin seaslugs of my lungs that plunder air

  are lovelier or more temperate than another girl’s?

  Skin-deep’s more legible. So now let me enhance

  the parts that, underneath this skin, are less than taut

  and translate nature’s failings with synthetic sympathy

  building a shrine in silicone to my elastic youth.

  When they stumble on my longbarrow and dig me up,

  they’ll find my parchment in a randomness of sticks,

  my bowl of skull, fissured with fine occiput craquelure,

  two black stare-holes. My gaptooth grin. Tangled

  in the nuggets of my vertebrae Mum’s locket

  and on the birdcage of my ribs will sit two jellyfish,

  pristine, intact, pert as the day they were slipped in.

  CLAUDIA DAVENTRY

  The Doll’s House

  Welcome to my second boudoir, my salon,

  my little beauty parlour

  La Petite Maison –

  you’ll know it by the paper lantern

  hanging over the door

  and its constant stream of gorgeous women.


  Not one of the backstreets’ scalpel and slab.

  My credentials are good,

  leaving you fresh and pampered –

  not mangled, crisped and toasted,

  broke and left for dead!

  I only deal in butterflies and swans.

  Give me, let’s say, the most unsymmetrical woman –

  I’ll make her a Helen of Troy,

  turn a dog’s slop-dinner

  into a red hot stunner

  in only half a day.

  No hocus pocus – just the Art of Grooming.

  I’m trained by a woman who only used her fingers,

  cloth and mirror – nothing more –

  no creams, colours or potions.

  I was hooked, got my own notions,

  took it from there.

  Although successful she’d call me a swindler.

  Mistress-Madeline of a thousand hairdos,

  the endless counter of creams,

  sticks, polish, soap and scents –

  just watch me turn cracked stumps

  into ruby red talons! –

  coax life into a face as grey as mothballs.

  I love a challenge and you’re getting the best

  at rates that are reasonable.

  My grotto’s very well equipped

  to handle any hag or misfit

  and I’ll take control.

  Trust my experience and impeccable taste.

  I’m a devil-good hairdresser – curls or frizz,

  setting it straight or using a colour.

  What you don’t want cut or plucked

  I’ll coif into a masterpiece!

  I even do cunt-hair

  and you should see my collection of antique wigs.

  Sample my range of little special somethings

  for anyone and everyone –

  tried and tested treats and peps

  for tired eyes and thinning lips,

  wrinkles, crow’s feet, sagging skin.

  I’ll razor out corns and cold cream bunions.

  Throw out your arm, thigh or ankle

  for something more permanent –

  a dainty tattoo (fine ink

  or pig’s blood needled under the skin)

  or what about a little ornament –

  sparkling jewel to squeeze inside your navel!

  Never less than seeking out perfection.

  Similar to an architect,

  ingenious creativity

  and steady hands are necessary.

  One false step

  an angel’s become a slop-faced slattern.

  I swear the world’s a sumptuous exhibition

  on a massive stage –

  piece of vaudeville or theatre,

  parade or brilliant gala

  with a stunning showcase

  of a hundred thousand stunning women.

  And I’m bored with the talk. Call it what you want –

  grease or war-paint,

  touch-up, non-essential,

  cover-up, superficial,

  a bunch of evils in the best arrangement –

  it’s all crap! Enhancing beauty’s an art.

  CHERYL FOLLON

  Achieving the Lotus Gait

  In winter, the uphill path to Madame Xing’s

  is treacherous. I watch for loose

  stones among the grey-brown gravel

  and the birds are almost silent

  as each step quarries me,

  wincing on wooden pattens.

  Madame unravels yards of stinking cotton

  from my feet and her thorough thumbs

  knead them from numbness.

  She honours my feet with warmed water,

  loosening shedding skin,

  trims each bruised nail to the quick.

  She rebinds each foot in cotton lengths

  soaked in herbs and animal blood.

  A neat figure-of-eight turns

  over instep, gathers toes, under foot

  and round the heel, each pass tighter

  than the last. And then my thoughts

  cringe homewards, as I totter out under

  a brittle moon; my own weight

  crushing each foot into the correct shape.

  BARBARA SMITH

  Recipe for a Saint

  Conviction like a gun magazine, youth,

  laserbeam eyes, elation, a hymen,

  a white robe and a heart that sears the chest.

  Around twelve is best, though if the years

  have screeched past like demons

  in T-birds, not to fret.

  Sometimes rapture comes quietly.

  Should they be shy on jubilance,

  diligence will do.

  If you haven’t got a virgin, use a penitent.

  See Mary M, Mary of Egypt, in fact,

  all the bad Marys and a Margaret besides.

  The robe is disposable. Indeed

  it is usually stripped before execution

  and so much the better for tributary paintings.

  That heart, strong as a water wheel,

  must be saved once removed,

  and spirited to the Vatican.

  The eyes that lie, gouged and fogging

  on the ground, are not so important.

  Give them to a child for marbles.

  KIRSTEN IRVING

  A God-Problem

  (FROM The Theology of Hair)

  Because of my crown, I came to doubt the Word,

  and the power of trichologians

  to trim it.

  They sheared long curls of mortality

  with their razors and knives.

  ‘A flock of goats on the mountains of Gilead.’

  ‘Her hair is like unto a mantle of porphyry.’

  ‘If a woman should go bare-headed, she shall be shorn,

  and if this step

  be distasteful to her, she shall be shaved as well.’

  Should a woman be dragged by her hair to a fold

  as a lamb to the slaughter? By shepherds? Were they bald?

  Standing before your altar,

  in my worst nightmares, I see

  a woman, shorn, being drowned as a witch,

  each single hair plucked out;

  another girl reaches out to her,

  she is tarred and feathered in dark stains;

  she turns into Esther, offers shit and mud

  instead of rare perfumes.

  Jesus, what would you say today

  to women who wear veils?

  Is there a place for us in your sanctum?

  We long to hear that story

  again and again. The one about a sinner.

  You let her dry your feet

  with the unfettered beauty of her hair

  and nobody stopped her. Nobody.

  MENNA ELFYN

  translated from the Welsh by Elin ap Hywel

  Pamela Asks the Right Questions

  Pamela had not been a prostitute for long

  before her exes wanted to become her clients.

  Suddenly, her old boyfriends loved

  her body the way children love

  strange flowers: raised above a garden’s

  dirt-bed they wonder what it takes

  to be a bee, wonder what it takes

  to pluck the stem and drink

  the flower’s nectar.

  Pamela feared that she was

  a flower to which the bees only came

  for answers. What answers?

  Pamela wondered out loud

  one night when her ex-college-boyfriend Chad

  had her lying on her back. What answers?

  Chad didn’t answer,

  but she didn’t expect him to.

  A drop of sweat dripped down

  Pamela’s cheek.

  Her feet gripped the sheets

  with their small fingers.

  She pictured herself as Eve,

  fruit-eaten, waiting hours

  fo
r a verdict from God.

  In the dark garden, she cloaked herself gently

  in palm, pursed her lips, let one

  breast fall, as if to plea,

  Your godliness, give it to me.

  Give me an answer.

  KATIE CONDON

  The Bed

  This is the bed

  that I became a woman in,

  that I lay naked on on tepid nights,

  after my grandmother’s scaly-fingered gardener

  half-marched, half crept in here and mended it

  (like a man mends a cage in a zoo,

  with excited reluctance);

  I lay in the shade

  of this lop-sided wardrobe –

  that looks like a caramelised ungainly antelope

  with nothing between its head and the constellations

  except the occasional stiff-winged aeroplane –

  and sent my long gold clitoris to sea

  between my legs, streamlined and sweet

  like a barge

  laden with sweetmeats and monkeys

  bound for some distant land;

  and this is the bed I saw the chickens from,

  running across the yard without their heads,

  and smelt the farmers

  leaning on their cows that had cars’ names –

  a smell of blood and milking and desire

  I was suddenly part of, and sunk in,

  like necks in Startena.

  SELIMA HILL

  To the vagina

  Every poet, drunken fool

  Thinks he’s just the king of cool,

  (Every one is such a boor,

  He makes me sick, I’m so demure),