Poetry by Elizabeth McGeown

               Jane Rahman CC



The Unintended Consequences of School

You will develop (breasts) eyes in the back of your head;
these can be covered with the latest hairstyle.
 
You will find your place in the orchestra, 
the string section or, no, percussion of flinches.
A mild reflex action when adult male gives instruction:
blood vessels obey him when he uses a soft, 
mocking tone and your face lights itself afire.
Eyes close involuntarily when he yells; 
it is a warning for you to become smaller. 
This is an integral part of your learning: your ancestors 
did the same and sought the cool, dark quiet of inner eyelids 
when he imposed his will upon them.
 
You can taste their laughter with malicious intent
like panic, like crossing to the other side of the street 
to get away, like a lock-yourself-in-the-bathroom break, 
like a rigid spine that will not look behind (here is 
where you will need those carefully concealed hair-eyes)
no matter what, no matter if your name is called, 
no matter if you feel fingers on your cheek, breath
on the back of your neck, bra being unclasped, a sharp
compass point in the centre of your spine.
 
Muscle memory retains: many years later a city street, 
a snort, a cough too hacking to be real stutters into a giggle.
More of them join in but your neck knows better than this.
You have taught it well, they might be streetwise but you, 
you have been trained and you will never turn around.

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Dreamboy

I don't love love. I like love, tolerate love, am a little sick of love. It's love that makes my eyes flick away for a millisecond when couples smooch on tv, telling myself it's normal to do this and cringe at the soft sucking sound of a kiss. Normal, not baggage, not issues not fear not utmost panic not — I don’t want to be touched, I just want to be held. Not gritting teeth and convincing myself with gallons of cranberry juice that I am well, adjusted, smooth, seamless, sexy, uncaring, nonchalant woman. I don't love love.

But these boys on my movie screen are glowing. Golden lion glowing and as soon as I start to warm to their sun, as soon as I start to gaze upon them their colour drains from them. There is a drowning, a knife, a skull fracture and I can love these safe boys but my love is killing them. Movie boys will always comb their hair and shoot themselves, will lose themselves in heavy-lidded meaningful eye contact before they plummet off the cliff. I cannot possibly be responsible for all of this and yet I am. The cutting room floor was different before I became involved. I am changing the cellular makeup of these narratives just by engaging. 

Five of us lie on a bed, gigging with legs woven through each other’s and leather-jacket boy gazes down on us, black hair falling forward over his face. He is laughing, not unkindly, we feel safe but this will be the death of him. He is too tall somehow and I wonder how his face is created. How the bones and teeth of the skull scaffold the skin in a way that mine never did.

Lord, put me
to sleep again.
If I sleep I can
remake them. They
are Angels and
by their deaths
they are healing me. 

Please, God: Netflix me another Angel.
​

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Elizabeth McGeown is from Belfast, Northern Ireland and is the current All-Ulster Slam Champion. She has recently featured in Banshee, Abridged and Riggwelter. She is the winner of the 2019 Cúirt Festival Spoken Word Platform. She has been a finalist in the All-Ireland Poetry Slam and represented Northern Ireland at the 2019 Hammer & Tongue UK Slam Finals in the Royal Albert Hall, London. She has received funding from Arts Council of NI and The National Lottery to work on her first full-length spoken word show.

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