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1st Prize Amnesty International
Human Rights, 2005
in anthology Images of Women,
2006, Arrowhead Press
in association with Second Light
Network
Katya
Not
of my own choosing
do
my paps darken like muzzles.
My
belly slowly swells.
I
cannot see my valley now.
I
crave for lassi
but
they bring us rusty water
in
the bottom of a can.
They
come and come,
day,
night, day,
unbuttoning
as
the door slaps against the stucco.
They
leave our thighs and faces
crusty
with their stink.
And
after me,
they
hump across on to my mother,
covering
her shrunken face
with
her heavy dirndl skirt.
She
is dry, dry.
Her
womb is a husk.
Each
day I am ripening.
I
do not want this cuckoo
fluttering
its rabid wings
in
my darkness.
I
can see its wild eyes beneath my skin.
It
will suck me dry as rock.
Yet,
I have practised its birth—
how
I will keep my legs far apart,
my
eyes screwed shut,
then
roll it with my heel in the dust
kicking
it and its afterbirth
down
the mountainside.
Or,
how I will say, Give me my baby,
and
boy or girl, call it Katya.
That
was my mother’s name.
Pat Borthwick
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last
update:
e-mail Pat
poetry favourites:
Inc
Writers
and in
the
shop
...
collections - "Between
Clouds And Caves",
Littlewood Arc;
"Swim", Mudfog
featured
in anthologies:
"The Poetry Cure", Bloodaxe;
"Images
of Women", Arrowhead Press in assoc with Second Light Network;
and
"Stranger",
Poetry on the Lake / Wyvern Works
pamphlets:
"In
Deep Waters";
"Monkey Puzzles"
"Hospital
Corners", Pharo
Other
publications:
"Upshoots";
"Chalk Marks";
"Sheds";
CD:
"RealEstate"
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