The Nasty Woman
for the Peeps/Mendoza
after Gwendolyn Brooks
I will not sing Mrs May’s song.
A blue song should be grey.
I’ll wait until November
And sing a song of gay.
I’ll wait until November
That is the time for We.
I’ll go out in the voting dark
And sing most terribly.
And all the little chumpsters
Will stare at me and say,
“That is a Nasty Woman
Who only sings in gay.”
9 Nov 2016
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Dissociative paralysis nowhere near the Duke of Clarence, N1
premise: from prae ‘before’ + mittere ‘send’
and the same arm—
my right—
didn’t reach
to stop you
leaving.
I felt apart
from my kind,
as when told
between an
everyday in-
& ex-hale no—
the last girl . . .
she had tried
to leave before
we were ready
got tied
to that chair
and videoed.
Spectacle
unspecified
but confirmed
by three grins
& no laughter.
His arm
moved freely
in its point—
the wooden seat
was real, as was
the scene &
its conductor.
His legs
worked, trod
steps from bar
to basement,
voice box easily
shouted back
the singers’ diary
was below—
that I
must be too
if I needed
the gig.
I didn’t dare
descend, did
not drop
even my
fingerprint
to my lap.
Sat still,
as if tied
to a web
of all chairs
the space
could hold.
I recognized
(again)
I was already
in an after—
care required
if I was
to leave this
lock-in, since
I had not reached—
though the need
to had sprung
down my
arm at his no,
the last—
loyal flesh
ready
to aim at
the world,
if allowed
by my rapid
geometry:
counted the
increments
beyond
my 5’4,
guessed
chance of
success
shunting
top bolt right
plus door
before I
would be
stopped and
the facts
ignited. I
knew—as did
my arm—moving
would mobilize
the ending. I must
have babbled
my alternative tale;
the boyfriend,
whose beanie I’d
come to retrieve,
waiting outside
(in truth in
Afghanistan).
I don’t remember
how I got out.
Nor all that took
place. I know
a woman whose
skin shook
attacked the door
til welcomed—
demanded her
next hit, begged
as I had wanted to.
Before she left,
disrupted
& witnessed
the scene
enough perhaps
for me to be
released
into my new
London,
something
of me stolen
to distill within—
lost property
I called
in for today,
a life later.
Found posh flats
taking as much.
Premises move
and meanwhile
limbs will
their way.
27 Feb 2018
Note
lock-in
noun
1. an arrangement according to which a person or company is obliged to deal only with a specific company.
2. British a period during which customers are locked into a bar or pub after closing time to continue drinking privately.
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from A coeliac in the archive: gluten-free tea with Helen Adam
And the collage will be
get-me-not
Helen Adam mash-up plus cupcake
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“The Nasty Woman” appeared in Resist Much, Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Dispatches Editions, 2017). Shearsman Books published the chapbooks CONT. (2015) and The Sea Quells (2013). “A Coeliac in the archive: gluten-free tea with Helen Adam” featured in Molly Bloom Issue 12 (Jan, 2017) https://previously-in-mollybloom.weebly.com/amy-evans.html. Images, text and music by Helen Adam copyright © the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, and used with permission.