Tuesday, 12 July 2011

Ourstory by Carole Satyamurti

I've seen this on the underground a few times now and I just love it...

Ourstory by Carole Satyamurti

Let us now praise women
with feet glass slippers wouldn’t fit;

not the patient, nor even the embittered
ones who kept their place,

but awkward women, tenacious with truth,
whose elbows disposed of the impossible;

who split seams, who wouldn’t wait,
take no, take sedatives;

who sang their own numbers, went uninsured,
Knew best what they were missing.

Our misfit foremothers are joining forces
underground, their dusts mingling

breast-bone with scapula, forehead
with forehead. Their steady mass

bursts locks; lends a springing foot
to our vaulting into enormous rooms.

From Stitching the Dark: New and Selected Poems published by Bloodaxe (2005)

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