MEMENTO MORI on 11th February, anniversary of Sylvia Plath's death
My pen stabs those who let you die My pen melts the ice that froze you My pen splits the apple that damned you My pen explores your wound and heals it My pen as wand wakes you from your sleep My pen as staff is St. Christopher to your Christ My pen as sceptre anoints you as queen of rhymes My pen as taper lights the candle in your remembrance And without those two letters as suffix My pen is saying to you on this your death-day
LIVE! LIVE! LIVE!
published in Chapman Magazine Number 46.
MISS CURRER BELL
Your wren frame and rib cage (brittle as the picked bones of a baked capon)
trod slimy flagstones in flimsy shoes where you shivered in churches, expiating not your sin but the cant of others.
You saw them all die, including the profligate brother
from consumption, bad water and cold kitchen floors: Ellis, with her heath-wanderings and intractable will and Acton, docile and willing to give herself to her Maker.
Your fame never cooled your rage, but in a snowdrop dress you gave yourself to a clod whose possession killed you.
published in FRESH OCEANS an anthology of poetry by Scottish Women (including Valerie Gillies, Margaret Elphinstone, Kathleen Jamie, Naomi Mitchison)
OLD SIR JOHN
So you, Sir John, were her kinsman and that sperm from your loin spawned a man who ruled the waves. Yes, Sir John, brute face stern patriarch whiskered and spatted, Sir John.
You, Sir, a merchant prince who carried on a tidal wave all in your wake making them flotsam and jetsam and fake. You, Midas and grotesque swept up slaves into galleys, plantations, estates, controlling and nailing them all to your mast, Sir John.
And now, six generations on, She still feels your evil presence, Sir John, Your sin has been visited on her.