9/2/2018 Poetry By Rosemary McLeish João Prado Flickr Deadly Nightshade It seemed like a pretty way to die. A purple flower, a few green leaves. Stuffed in the mouth, easy, nicer than lupin pods, not so crunchy. In the garden of my grandmother there are gooseberry bushes but I didn’t come from there: they are only laughing at me who say so. I come from the sky and the hospital where they changed me, gave me to the wrong mother. She doesn’t like girls, my grandmother. She’s a nasty old woman, face like rhubarb, tongue like a nettle. She catches me hiding in the gooseberry bushes, drags me out, careless of cuts and scratches. Her hands are hurting hands. “What have you done?” she says. I say nothing. She drags me to the house, to the downstairs cloakroom, but I don’t want to go. I want what I cannot have, my daddy to take me away with him. But he is already gone and I am too sad and too little to look for him. How does she know? She always knows everything. She is a witch, mouth like a thistle, fingers like forks. She sticks them down my throat, makes me sick. She smacks, shouts, calls me ‘stupid little girl’, says I have no right, what was I thinking? I hate her. Everything goes black. Nobody speaks to me. The mother rules the roost now. Slaps are easier to come by than words. I am stuck. There’s no escape. And I don’t know it yet, but I will always have a grandmother to make me sick, to drag me and shake me, to walk the floor with me. She is there when I take the pills She mocks my lack of coins for the gas. She taunts me when I lie on the kerb in Avignon and can’t get up. Today she haunted me when I thought of the knives in the kitchen. Mad, cruel-fingered witch forcing me to live in this angry world without him, without him. Horror History There are no ghosts here, just memories of the grandmothers, the one with her grinding poverty, the cruelty of her teasing, the other with her frowns, her second sight, her dislike of girls. There is no axe murderer behind the shower curtain, only the black of the boot cupboard, the Three Wise Men on the attic stairs, the three bears lying in wait in the living room, the green man with the spear crouched round the bend of the toilet. There is no filth in this hell-hole, apart from the stink of the infant school toilets, the shit on the seats, up the walls, the wee on the floor, the gagging smell and the chains that don't pull, and the holding on all day, all the way home on the bus, all the way down to the gate, and the letting go at the sight of home, the secret washing of knickers, the silence, the shame. There is no gore here, except for the blood in the toilet two weeks out of every four, the covert incineration of rags, and the scratchings and pickings at sores that don't heal, the whiff of the hospital ward made familiar by Munchhausen's proxy. There are no starving Africans in this story, rather the lonely stretches of Anorexia, the effort not to be noticed, to take up no space, the strange instinct to have nothing on the plate, nothing inside. There is no hostage taken here, only the empty rooms, bare bones, bare boards, hard back-breaking words, the shadow of the executioner on a spirit continually broken. There is nothing amiss here but the evil in a mother's eyes, the torture of a father's silence, the apathy of sibling witnesses, the ache of a heart full of hate. My Mother’s Scars I don’t know about the diagnosis but I’ve seen my mother’s scars. I’ve seen the scratching at the itch, the picking at the scalp, the fingers roaming through the hair. I have seen the scabs when giving her a perm. I have to wait for sores to heal or be the one to make her cry with every searing accidental burn. I don’t know the diagnosis but I’ve seen my mother’s scars, the fingernails as sharp as knives, the gouging of the unhealed wounds, the blood running down the thighs. I’ve seen the strata on those thighs, the ropes and silvery lines of ancient harm, the overlay of pinker, shinier traces, and on the surface of this archeology yesterday’s half-formed scabs. Do other mothers ask their daughters to cut their nails so they can’t break the skin? Or do other girls live in calm houses without secrets and whispered sharing of shameful sorrows, ugly truths? Do other daughters grip their mother’s wrists like handcuffs, handicapping the tearing at the flesh, the baying of the beast in hysteria’s la-la land? While every cell says look away, don’t share this private business, and every thought says this is not my secret, I cannot speak of this. When every tear says Mummy, Mummy, don’t be sad, don’t be bad, let me hold you, let me rock you, let me love you better. I don’t know about the diagnosis but I have lived my mother’s scars. ![]() Rosemary McLeish is an outsider artist and poet, now living in Kent, UK. She is 72, and after a long hiatus has started writing poetry and regularly performing it again. She likes to exhibit her poetry along with her artworks, and lately has started making zines which combine both. She is working on getting a collection published in the near future, though the “under forty lines” rule is hampering her progress. Some things don’t change.
BFH
9/3/2018 02:08:32 pm
These are wonderful. And they hit hard. Comments are closed.
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