Like Marilyn

In those old photographs, I see a teenager, pale and lacking confidence, happy to allow mother or sister-in-law to take over for a while, united in womanhood, your blonde hair curled around your face, like Marilyn’s. I arrived too soon. The sparkle of the glamorous life you hoped for faded into monochrome. You grew up […]

Dancing in the Centre of a Noun

(from Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Anne Hathaway’) Encircling all my words with his,he caressed them with a gentle touch,slipped them on as if they were ashoe, a glove, a familiar verbhe desired for his own; dancingtogether to a melody inquadruple time, echoing thebeat of hearts, we were the centreof the serious ceremony ofthe allemande: we were […]

Poetical Spouses

I have the honour of hosting tonight’s dVerse Poets Pub Poetics – Poetical Spouses. My challenge is inspired by Carol Ann Duffy’s collection of poems, The World’s Wife, in which she presented characters, stories, histories and myths from the point of view of the ‘women behind the men’. We are taking a character, fictional or […]