I want to run outside
And grab handfuls of dust
And pour them into your lap, pour them.
I want to explain that these
Are my doubts
And how I lose them when the wind blows.
But they always come back, muddled.
And I’m not blaming you except
It never happened before.
The raspberries are out and
I have pips in my teeth.
Sarah Hulme is a Durham University graduate who enjoys writing poetry as a way to understand thoughts, feelings and the world we live in.
I scrutinise my nipples for sap
but I’m not even sure where to look
and listen carefully for a splash
of colour but hear nothing I know.
It’s been months of course
but I think you might not come now
and even with your head between my walking legs
I do not know where you are.
In time my body will prove wiser
and when all that raspberry tea and swirling
does not bring you any quicker
I feel into age-old maps of women.
You will come when it is time.
Rachel Bower is a poet and research fellow at the University of Leeds. Her pamphlet, Moon Milk, will be published with Valley Press in May 2018. She is currently co-editing an anthology with Helen Mort entitled Verse Matters, which is out with Valley Press in November 2017. Her book, Epistolarity and World Literature, 1980-2010 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in August 2017. Rachel’s poems have been published by Stand Magazine, BBC Radio, Now Then Magazine, Valley Press, Three Drops Press, The Stare’s Nest, Pankhearst and others, and she has had poems shortlisted for several prizes, including The London Magazine Poetry Prize and the Plough Prize 2016. She is also the founder of Verse Matters, a feminist arts collective in Sheffield.
Foxglove Journal 