They don’t like us much
They don’t like us much. No, really, they don’t.
They don’t like our long hair tied back. They really don’t like
our hair short. ‘Excuse me, sir. Oh, sorry.’
They don’t like our eyes looking at them
unless obscured by shadows, false lashes.
Then, when so decorated, they want them turned only at them.
And they don’t like our clothes.
Tight ones mean we’re asking for it.
Baggy ones mean we don’t have self-respect.
They don’t like our occupations. No, I’m wrong.
They don’t see our occupations.
They don’t like us much
and I don’t like many of them.
Bad Alice
Don’t change, Alice.
Alice when she grows or shrinks.
Or turns a great eye out the attic window.
Don’t look at us, Alice.
Alice asks questions, tries to show her brain.
God, Alice,
show us anything else you like but that.
Bad. Bad poem. Bad, bad Alice.
Trinity College Dublin Library: The Long Room
The smell of old books.
White marble busts of dead white males.
No women here. No women at all.
But ladders … and girls …
Oh, yes, girls now.
Glimpsed, working upstairs.
They murmur,
out of sight.
Ordinary killer
Dedicated to the memory of Jessica Lloyd, Corporal Marie-France Comeau
and who knows how many other women in how many other countries
He kills me
He kills me not
He kills me
He kills me not
He –
Daisy, daisy, tell me true,
Does my lover love me? A little? Or no?
He kills me
He kills me not
He kills me
He kills me not
He kills –
Strangers in their far-off lands
Demonstrators, if they get out of hand
The girls who try to join his band
He kills me
He kills me not
He kills me
He kills me not
Oh misery
He killed me
