"La liberte pour les femmes commence au ventre"
Simone de Beauvoir
A Fat Woman Replies Sixty Years Later
September 2006
Take a look at us now, Simone
how free we are from our insides -
we scarcely know they’re there,
the womb withdraws under flesh.
We sail our wobbly hulks through the malls
munch on shit
make twenty stone.
There is no such thing as greed.
We eat what we want.
That’s how free our lives can be.
Our magazines lionise
beautiful vacuity,
such overwhelming freedom
Simone.
Pull up a chair, take up a fork
They feed us well
the multinationals
in every corner of the globe
or nearly.
We need not grow food, nor yet
cook it,
so freed from the stove we’re forgetting how
to use it.
Sixty-five percent of us are fat, Simone.
Our kids are porkers too and it’s all
because we’re liberated. Not that I’m suggesting
we go back
to big families, laundry dollies, coppers and carpet beaters,
what kept us thin.
We have triumphed and so has capitalism.
Take a look at us, the trophy wives
see how our arses overflow the chairs.
We need another revolution.
Schoolgirls In The Women’s Changing-Room
September 2006
The trick is to arrive with your togs
under your uniform
and after the swim
to dress contortionist
your towel tight across your chest
pulling on underwear and skirt
fast, skin damp, all hidden
because
since you were five you’ve been taught
perverts lurk
everywhere, even your teachers
may be alarmingly aroused.
Possibly the Victorians experienced less shame
than you do
this potent twenty-first century
mix of fear and guilt. Your young,
strong bodies march off to class
unshowered, dusted with chlorine.
We older women wash our hair
walk naked to our clothes, sometimes chat
about the weather, the state of the nation -
while the last contortionist buttons her blouse
over her wet purdah, tugs it out
from under, stuffs it in her bag and hurries
off, ipod ringing with the latest rap
about fucking, fighting and how women are crap.
Sorry I’m Such A Bastard
(for crippled married women everywhere)
April 2009
Sorry I’m such a bastard but I’m only just
holding it together. Moment I open
my eyes the morning world rushes in
hungover as hell and I hobble foul
as that other clubfoot but two centuries
too late and wrong gender.
It all began with Byron
original solipsist and furious tosspot
spouting individualisim and infidelity.
Midmorning finds me cleaning the loo.
Someone has to.
Maybe it’s because he had one clubfoot
and I’ve got two.
Just
(After Kipling’s ‘If’)
I’ll just be half a minute, I’ll just make a quick call, it’s
just a little break, it’s just nothing at all. It’s just
the way things are, it’s just that that’s the truth, it’s just
that you weren’t listening...
I’ll just make this little change, I’ll just make sure it’s
right.
It’ll just be brief and inconsequential - it’ll just be just the
same!
(It’ll just be what it was before just under a different name).
If you just sit there listening while I bore you all to death
I’ll be finished in just a second, I just need to take a breath.
I’m just off down to Wellington to push for further laws
to just make sure that justice will just never go unserved.
It’s just a little nothing, so don’t worry your little heads
It’ll just make life safer and fairer and kinder for all.
Just leave the door unlatched and my dinner in the oven thank you.
Moving Offshore
April 19th, 2009
On the eve of Helen’s departure
Mr Key is chuffed in China
wined and dined and driven around
Mr Key believes he’s the toast of the town.
Helen boards a plane and flies to New York
Mr Key in China talks and talks and talks
import and export and immigration
education, tourism - all in translation.
Mr Key.
Did you mention the fisheries?
Did you put in a plea
for the depleted rising seas
carbon-loaded skies and future
exodus from China in search of water?
Courage, Mr Key, is the key to the matter.
We face annihilation from banality and chatter.
While Helen flies northwards to face up to the nightmare
Mr Key is chuffed to be dealing in whiteware.
