Poem about Breasts

Pornography, pornography!

You’ve got a lot to answer for.

You’re probably the reason why

I like it when girls call me whore

and grab my hair, and slap my face,

but more than this, much worse than this,

you’ve spread misinformation

on the topic of our tits.

And I don’t mean just the tits of trans girls,

though you’ve got some odd ideas

of how we get them, call them ‘fake’

- but have a feel: no implants here!

Or are they artificial as they

sprung up after hormones?

Well, tell me, please, exactly

how your girlfriend’s girls were grown?

No – this breast-based boondoggle  is a bane to trans and cis,

and the thing that really bothers me is this:

ask a fella if he’ll draw a dame without her vest

and see what shapes he uses

for the front part of her chest,

and what will you see? Beach-balls! Spheres!

That white thing from The Prisoner

twice over, faceless back-up heads

too big for any milliner!

But, just as perfect circles

aren’t found anywhere in nature,

I’m afraid I have to tell you boys

there’s far more variation

in the contents of our bras than are

allowed for in your narrow chest-aesthetic,

that reduces what’s near-infinite

to mere dialectic

between ‘pert’ and ‘buxom’. But:

no blame. It took me time to get it,

and if I’m honest, guys,

I never really got it ‘til

I rubbed gel on my thigh,

and found that, where I used to glance,

I couldn’t keep from staring:

only now I wasn’t ogling or perving

but comparing,

seeing how I measured up,

and I won’t lie: I’ll tell you

from the bottom of my B-cup,

I’m not on the winning side.

I’m still a noob to boobs! A chestal virgin! Not well-versed

in how to lift and separate

or generate

a cleavage, I’m

intimidated

when a bosom’s heaving,

and I envy women who are blessed with great big

aurioles, while mine just skirt my nipples

like a pair of poxy holes...

but knowing mine aren’t perfect

has made me much more aware

of all the imperfections I

and other women share.

We women feel the same way

when we’re checking out each other:

the girl who’s firm and perky knows

that she will never smother

faces underneath her chest:

while the one who’s more endowed,

that that lass reckons favoured,

is wishing for the freedom

of a bra less engineered,

a back that aches less, and that guys

might maybe, just occasionally

look her in the eyes,

or at least, if you must look

so clearly at her chest,

then don’t let the sole criteria

by which each breast’s assessed

be where her pups are placing

on the Jordan-Moss Continuum,

and whether, in a centrefold,

they’d excite your residuum,

but look at them! Just look at them

as if you’ve never seen

the inside of a strip club

or a line of beauty queens,

appreciate

we’re not one shape,

we’re loose and tight and pointy,

a variable phenomenon

to baffle Merleau-Ponty,

some bounce around Space Hopper-style,

while some are far from jumpy,

(and whatever shape they are,

be sure to check them if they’re lumpy)

spheres, ellipsoids, cylinders, and I will even swear

that I’ve seen some whose strawberry creams appear

to be square – and that’s alright! It’s great!

Don’t you boys dare to be disgusted,

because, sirs, I implore you to recall what Cornershop said,

and if you accept the premise the best pillow is a bosom,

look at a woman’s bed and you’ll find every kind of cushion,

because we know that sleep is better

when there’s comforters and bolsters,

and you’ll find as much variety here in our boulder-holsters,

so let’s hear it for the wobbly ones, let’s hear it for the tubes,

let’s hear it for the loners, and the chests with both removed,

and let’s hear it for the pot-pourri, the glorious plenitude

the motley mammary miscellany, the majesty of boobs!

Video post - You remind me of Tyson, Tamikka

Let me tell you something about poets. 

We're mercenaries, of a sort. When we take on a battle, it's always with a view to what we'll get out of it, artistically. Even if it's a cause we really believe in, we'll never be satisfied until we manage to get a decent poem out of the issue. 

So when I began working on the Tamikka Brents story for So So Gay, investigating her sponsors and the transphobic hate-groups who were declaring their support for her, I knew I was gonna be pissed-off if I didn't emerge from spending weeks mired in sports journalism without a decent poem to show for it. 

Well, tonight I wrote that poem.  

For the benefit of those unable to hear the poem, I've included a transcript below, in the previous post!

The Ballad of CeCe McDonald

Trigger warning: this poem discusses a transphobic attack and its aftermath. Certain verses also refer to prison rape. If either of these things are likely to trigger you, feel free not to read.

CeCe McDonald copped a plea.

Guilty. Manslaughter. Second degree.
She had to. There’d be no fair trial.
Forty-one more months in jail

the best she could expect from them,

the white, cisgendered, Minnesota men
whose prejudice would seal her fate,
ruling ‘inadmissible’ the hate

inscribed on the so-called victim’s flesh,

but saying that her one bounced cheque
would be allowed to testify
against her virtue. Cheques don’t lie,

but swastika tattoos may prove

mere relics of a misspent youth.
That Schmitz said go back to Africa
was, the whites said, neither here nor there:

a man was stabbed, and CeCe’s race

made Freeman think he had a case.
Freeman, who’d tried anti-fascists
but let Darrell Evanovich’s

killer walk, had CeCe bound

in custody. The facial wound
that she’d received that night turned septic,
left untreated, grew and festered,

as CeCe festered in their jail,

each day eroding CeCe’s will
to fight, and making Freeman bold.
He’d show the press how he controlled

those elements – the blacks, the queers –

Tea Party voters tend to fear:
pandering to fears like these
keeps Blue Dog Freeman in his seat

and hapless CeCe in her cell,

while the Caucasian thugs who yelled
abuse and chased her through the streets
are free to party, laugh and eat,

drink beer and cheer at Vikings games

while CeCe languishes in chains
for standing ground that wasn’t hers
in the eyes of pallid jurors.

Meanwhile, Robert Zimmerman

– the dodgy judge, not Bob Dylan –
tells Fox News that his son George
had probable defensive cause

to shoot a black boy in the chest

at point-blank range, then flee arrest:
but George’s victim wasn’t white,
so George posed no risk of flight

(though he’d lain low for one whole month,

while press and police went on the hunt).
So Zimmerman was granted bail:
paid 15K and walked from jail,

where CeCe sits awaiting sentence,

hoping to serve out her penance
for the crime of keeping her friends safe
in a prison where she won’t be raped

by cis male guards and prisoners

with shivs or barks of ‘strip for search’,
a decency that isn’t certain
in the realm of men like Freeman,

governed only for some people,

who are not considered equal,
whatever patriotic lies
its blue-eyed children may imbibe

when they chant their morning pledge,

where millions teeter on the edge
of losing homes to bailed-out banks
while Mormon millionaire mountebanks

pledge to protect blastocysts

and cuff a quarter of the wrists
on Planet Earth, and shackle more:
oh, Amnesty are keeping score,

but who cares? We’re the Great Exception!

For rich white men we’ll make exemptions!
But if you’re not, well – just forget it.
Cop the plea. You’ll get no credit

from the local Fox affiliate.

Justice for all? You’re delirious!
The fact is that America
still operates a colour bar.

See CeCe, in her prison rack?
Her wrists, like most we cuff, are black.

                        *          *          *

CeCe McDonald has been sent to prison for the 'crime' of defening herself and her friends from a racist and transphobic attack. No attempt has been made to punish her attackers. Please sign the petition asking the Minnesota State Governor, Mark Dayton, to pardon her.

NaPoWriMo Poem Twenty-Three: Hey, AJ, what's up?

I sit down
and my stomach flips
the way it did
on Spuggy's Bridge
years ago
on the run
to Jarrow

breathlessness
with every step
exhausted legs
by half ten
in the morning

the boredom
of more time
than its plausible
to cope with
watching quiz shows
on the sofa
even Richard
Osman starts
to get annoying

the way once-certain dates
in diaries
sprout question marks
then crosses


       *                   *                      *

Today's poem is about, well, being ill. Just kind of popped into my head while I sit here getting my breath back for another epic attempt on the stairs before I get dressed to go to the doctors' and get my blood test results. I don't usually like the ee cummings 'I don't believe in punctuation' approach because it smacks, to me, of sixth form poets who've not got much beyond copying song lyrics onto their folders, but I've used it here because I think it gives the poem a sense of breathlessness. Ditto the short (well, for me anyway) lines.

NaPoWriMo Poem Twenty-Two: May 'n' the Abu, a Hay(na)ku

May:
I deport.
You, May? Not!

*    *    *

Look, don't judge me, I'm three poems behind here! This is inspired by the prompt from Day 21 to write a hay(na)ku, a haiku-like poem, the lines having one word in the first line, two in the second, and three in the third, and by the continual difficulty the Home Secretary seems to be having in knowing what day of the week it is.

NaPoWriMo Poem Twenty-One: The Body of the Enemy

You tell me that you're zen
and all we have to do is wait
for the body of our enemy
to wash by on the river.

You tell me that everything happens,
and is happening, for a reason.

You don't know what 'teleological' means,
but when I explain you nod and say 'yeah, cool.'

I sit by the river, where I can see stones
amid the low-tide trickle. I wait.
A shopping trolley rusts.

I turn and walk away, passing, on the bridge,
a man in chinos and an All-Blacks shirt
carrying a cardboard Michael Gove.

*     *     *

Face-to-face (well, almost) with Cardboard Gove! I wasn't going to return to him yet, but suddenly the last verse of this one seemed like the perfect place to put him. But what happens now? Does Cardboard Gove get chucked in the river? Who knows?

NaPoWriMo Poem Twenty: Ezra Pound Guest-Edits Nuts Magazine

The tedium
of pages and pages of boobs,

free-floating innuendo-lodestones
orbiting the radio-wave ghost-laugh of Sid James.

*        *      *

Getting caught up with NaPoWriMo after falling three days behind due to the lurgy that's currently knacking me up and which is, I think, a resurgence of my iron-deficiency anaemia. Anyway. This one is inspired by the prompt from day nineteen to write an 'opposite day' version of an existing poem, in this case Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro', and by this Observer story about the woman who, as an editor at Nuts magazine, had to edit their 'Assess Your Breasts!' feature.

NaPoWriMo Poem Nineteen: An Absolutely Commonplace Apocalypse

There were coronal mass ejections:
phone signals were patchy
and those of us with analogue TVs
cursed like dinosaurs stepping in tar pits,
distracted by the strange lights in the sky,
and grappled with portable aerials.

'Fracking' was given the go-ahead
in Lancashire, depite the risk of earthquakes
or running water catching fire
as the Thames so amazingly didn't
at the Milennium Eve celebrations;
a biblical punishment, hot and cold, on tap:
the destruction of the cities of the plain
re-enacted at kitchen-sink level.

Increasing numbers of sheep were born deformed.
As the Jubilee Barge was completed, files,
apparently newly-discovered, revealed the extent
of massacres carried out in the Queen's name
when she was newly-crowned.

There were sightings of giants in Liverpool.
Disabled people closed down part of London.
There was heavy rain in Sunderland throughout the day:
the view from the canteen was grim.

Most ominous of all, however: every paper
in the hospital newsagents
bore 100 DAYS TO GO
beneath its masthead,
counting down, not to some Mayan
Armageddon, but, worse, the advent
of the London Olympics.

      *                    *                   *

Perhaps it's the strain of having to come up with a new poem each day, but all I could think to do for this one was to write a list of the events that made the news yesterday. Ending with the Olympics in place of the Apocalypse just seemed...amusing, really.

NaPoWriMo Poem Eighteen: CN, Tanita, Dido, Ludwig, Annie

The singer's voice is neither male nor female,
a whisky sweet as mead
and smokey as the Romeo and Juliets
I chomped when I was trying to look butch
and fooling no-one. I drift down

back to the road out by the coachworks,
the bridge that made my stomach flip, Twist
in my Sobriety on radio, my father's angry voice,
'Is that a man or woman?' I pitch forward,

land on your sofa, resting my head on your shoulder
as a whole vinyl record of Tanita's voice
spills out around us. Thoroughly domestic,
all I ever wanted: what chance did I have,
what did she have, what chance any of

the objects in your gravity,
linked in non-locality, colliding atoms
bouncing off this moment?
That night I made White Russians like a tic,
kept that Dido song I liked trapped on repeat
and sang along - 'I want to be a hunter
again' - and somehow got home, drunker,
almost, than I've been before or since;

that repeated snatch of the Pathetique
hummed under my breath
following Maria round the seminary, shamming
that I knew anything real about music;

trying to reorder Asian History,
the last shelf of my section,
while Annie Lennox sings of changes drifting
the morning after when we talked divorce.
No more I love you's. Language is leaving me
in silence.

        *               *              *

And, on the stroke of midnight, here's NaPoWriMo poem 18. This was inspired by listening to CN Lester's fabulous album Ashes, which I finally got round to listening to today, and which I recommend you listen to as well - they do a brilliant version of 'Joan of Arc', the Leonard Cohen song. Because I like to be peculiar, the title of this poem is taken, not from a CN Lester song but from a Rae Spoon one, 'Come on Forest Fire (Burn the Disco Down)', mainly because I realised when I ran over the draft that I'd left Rae out and couldn't see any obvious way to crowbar him in there. It's not in response to any particular prompt, but I suppose, in the sheer number of song lyrics quoted, there's perhaps a little bit of a hangover from yesterday's instruction to include a song lyric in a poem.

***Edit 19/04/12***: I've changed the title. 'Ask the Colonial Ghosts' was a nice way of crowbarring a Rae Spon reference into the poem, but didn't really fit on the day when the news broke that Britain had suppressed files about our suppression of independence movements in the 50s. So instead I've just gone for the names of the musicians featured in the poem, in order.

NaPoWriMo Poem Seventeen: An Open Letter to a Hollow Man

Dear Mr Gove, I hope you don't mind me writing.
Today's prompt was to send an epistle
to an inanimate object. I thought of you
(I know, I know - we're not supposed to know,
but some of us have noticed, Mr G.
Your Secretary does a good impression
of that preposterous voice you used to do.
His talent for ventriloquism? That was just dumb luck).

It's fitting you've gone 2D. Not only since it's retro,
when even silver screens aspire to ape
our dance through pliant space. When holograms
of dead rap stars play live at Coachella. You were never
even that real, Mr G: a big hollow man
with a fistful of sham, and a shitty line in titles.
Celsius 7/7? We're lucky, I guess,
that the only writing you'll be known for now
is the price tag sticker on your back
and the Property of Rupert Murdoch
which I guess someone from the NASUWT
has scribbled where your arse should be.

Anyway, my mission for today, as I say,
is to write to an object bereft
of consciousness, indeed, of conscience - you, in other words -
and, furthermore, to proffer both a fact
and some form of fruit. So, first, let me take you back

to 1989, a viaduct in Aberdeen, a young man
fuelled by commie rage and Tennent's,
detourning a piece of the state apparatus
- a traffic cone, to be exact -
forty feet from Union Street
into the path of traffic passing
on the road below, then finding himself
bundled in a police van. Did you call them pigs?

Because that was you, of course, when you were still 3D,
before you sat in committee rooms and labelled teachers Trots
for objecting to your choice of Commisar;
before your flatpack afterlife propped in the office cupboard,
where you rest now, waiting, patient, for the morning
when your underlings will drag you out, unnoticed.
Long time to wait. Would you like a banana?
No - fair point. Nothing to digest it with. No matter.
Tell you what. I'll leave the skin down here.

             *                                 *                                    *

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt was to write an epistolary poem - a poem in the form of a letter - to an inanimate object. Who better to write to, then, than Cardboard Gove, last seen in NaPoWriMo Poem Nine?

There were a number of other things the poem had to include: a song lyric (here taken from 'Big Hollow Man' by Danielle Dax);  an 'oddball adjective-noun combination' (in this case, 'pliant space' - not that oddball, I know); a fruit (the banana); a street name and a measurement of distance ('forty feet from Union Street') and a historical fact - in this case Gove's arrest for chucking a traffic cone off a viaduct in Aberdeen back in 1989. I bet it really annoys him, that people keep bringing that up...

NaPoWriMo Poem 16: In Ruins

The bottom of the reservoir
is visible: cracked mud,
like a turtle's skin in close-up.

Driverless, the harvester
traces satellite-directed lines
up and down the wheatfield.

There's a gyre of plastic
turning in the ocean,
a belt of metal junk in space,

cardboard spread
in front of empty shopfronts
opposite the rich man's bank on Strand.

There's a hollowness in birdsong, now,
a slowing in the pulse of stars.
Everything is winding down

but the chatter of salaried egos,
selling Right Thought as the factories close,
as if self-belief could mug thermodynamics.

Refresh the page. Above the picture
of the smiling Chair,
the share price tumbles.

       *               *            *

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a piece starting from an image. Leafing through the paper I found a picture of a dried-up reservoir down south and started writing from that. Because the pictures in it share some of the same feeling as the new Patrick Keiller film, 'Robinson in Ruins' (and in fact the image in the second verse is taken from the film), I decided to reference that in the title.

NaPoWriMo Poem Fifteen

This is just to say

I have written
a parody
of that Carlos Williams
poem

which
you are probably
tired
of seeing parodied

Forgive me
it was so obvious
so short
and so easy

NaPoWriMo Poem Fourteen: Sonnet

Get up. Grit your teeth and you'll get through
the days of people you respect as much
as pubic fungus ordering what you do
with a fake-friendly shoulder-touch
they learned when they got their certificate
in watching eyes and using visual words
as advised by the Bandler pontificate.
Get used to speaking and not being heard:

it's not so bad when you can think of slicing
the tendons of those who say attitude
is all that matters, then advising
them that if they can't walk then they're screwed.
Get up, clench your fists and grit your teeth:
revenge and rage'll get you through the week.

NaPoWriMo Poem Thirteen: Deja Vu Pays Your Wages

Morning city light. Not gold or yellow,
not exactly white. A thinning wash
of creme anglaise rolled on the concrete's grey.

The baggy jeans of girls who stand at bus stops.
Poise that doesn't shift from foot to foot
or fuss with hair. A sense of being now
and visibly un-policed. Facade

like all the unsold studios
that look out on the river.
Cool, urbane, a British stab
at New York self-possession.
No-one home.

NaPoWriMo Poem Twelve: Ordet Soy

Frodo sure knows Gollum's funky:
taught his mouse a lively tune!
We berated fire-truckers!
I'm licked-out and highly-toned!
Dinner's down the bin - this weeder
was outmoded! Stringy shite!
All I mentioned was the Whedons.
Whoa, that Santa's frugal, right?

Sights on schlongs, a million long men
tease a goose, the gadgies melt
butter, mmm - but stir no felt
moose - a weirder farter, phoning
Dan, the grosser, warty young'un.
Anus fundies fund Zeus-seeing:
War on Holness! Why's he ringing?
Mischa's signing Joe's balloon.
Jawa rock, no rhyming sealer
sigh, nine toffs? Damn! Merde! Gerunds!

       *              *             *
Today's NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a 'homophonic translation' - basically, to translate a poem in a foreign language into English by changing each word into an English word it sounds like. So, here's two verses of Schiller's 'Ode to Joy' translated thus. I stopped after two because, really, where can you go when you've been reduced to swearing at gerunds?



.

Why do you have to be so DIRTY, AJ?

When I began addressing my gender identity in my poetry, there were two things I was scared of talking about. One was just my gender identity itself. But the other thing that frightened me was writing about sex. Addressing sex. Talking about sex. Because, you see, when it comes to sex and sexuality, trans people - and trans women especially - have to face a hell of a lot of policing. This post, by Monica Maldonado, gives a really deep insight into that. I urge you to read it. What really got me was this bit:

'Trans women are given two options: we are either the mute eunuch, “approximating the appearance of a woman” (as Benjamin said), or we are the supposed pervert or rapist who must be denied access to either medical treatment or social accommodation. Given such little leeway, and the deep stigma ascribed to each of these two options, trans women so often end up very reluctantly going along with the “less frightening” of the two. We become the compulsory eunuch in spite of however uncomfortable it might make us. Both options are non-choices for which the table is stripped by cis people of any other possibilities of what a trans woman could be — or is allowed to be.' - Monica Maldonado, 'How gatekeepers made me hate my body', cisnormativity.wordpress.com

That is why I was so afraid to write about sexuality in my work, and that is why I will continue to do so. My sexuality is a part of me, and I don't see why I should have to supress a part of me just to fit in with what a cis doctor feels I should conform to. The single artist I most admire, Tori Amos, has never made any secret of addressing her sexuality in her performance - why should I shy away from doing likewise?

According to gatekeepers, and to a certain brand of prescriptive, transmisogynist 'radical' feminist, there are two strikes against me: one, the fact I'm trans at all; two, the fact that I'm not only a trans woman who dares to have sex, but I also dare to have, shock horror, kinky sex! It's no surprise to anyone who's attended one of my gigs or read my work, but I'm kind of a masochist. I like to be treated rough, slapped around, dominated, etc etc, blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Only consensually, only with other girls, and only in safe space (and if you try beating me up without my consent, I will definitely do everything I can to put you in the hospital), but for some, even safe, consensual, mutual sadomasochism is going too far. It betrays the sisterhood. It replicates patriarchal power relations. It's violent (well, duh!). It's icky and dirty and pervy and why can't you be a good Catholic girl (actually, I do occassionally suspect that it's being a good Catholic girl that makes me such a masochist, but I digress)?

Sure, the radical feminists are hardly queueing up to get me back in with the Pope (though I am toying with doing a post sometime comparing second wave feminism to what St Paul did to Christianity, and of course there's always this cartoon), but you see what I mean.

There is massive pressure on you, as a trans person, to conform to a script that makes cis people feel unthreatened. So I knew, when I started writing about being trans, that the smart thing to do, the sensible, unthreatening thing to do, would be to leave sex, especially kinky sex, out of it. But, again, why?

The only reason for not talking about sex in my writing and performance was that to do so would frighten the horses. And that was the same reason I'd given myself for not writing about my gender for so long. And I wasn't going to waste any more time censoring myself.

So I stopped censoring myself, and I started writing about my sexuality as well as my gender, and I will continue doing so. Because no woman, of any sort, should feel afraid to talk about what she desires. And if you think that trans women should keep quiet? There's a name for people like you, and it starts with 'B' and ends with 'igot'.

NaPoWriMo Poem Eleven: The Quality of Light in Humberside

So much sun and so much water,
a million sparkles, like a cheap effect
- the kind that always works. The deep voice
in the movie trailer, electric guitar screech.

The feel of cobbles underneath my worn-down New Rocks.
Fruitbasket odour in the local Lush
as, sweating from the late September heat,
I ask what goes well with You Snap the Whip,
am handed soap that smells like seaside rock.

The warmth and strain of bodies, squeezing thighs,
legs spreading legs like wishbones, ragged breath,
sipped water in the breaks between our bouts,
snatched talk of girls and Manchester
and where John Godber's theatre used to be.

The fizz of lager in my throat,
the weirdness of compliments,
the paranoia of the long kebab shop queue.
Strange music in the taxi - only the strong will continue,
do you have it in you - thinking, silent, yes. Yes. Yes, I do.



.

NaPoWriMo Poem Ten: Stealing Thom Gunn's Falcon

I thought I was so tough, but, gentled by your hands,
cannot be quick enough to fly for you and show
that when I go I go at your commands.

There was a time when I gave orders, made demands,
when everyone who heard my name was cowed.
I, once, was thought so tough. Now, gentled by your hands,

I jump to your requests as if entranced.
Resigned, delighted at my overthrow:
now, when I go, I go at your command.

You set the rhythm and I dance your dance:
you script the drama I jump to run through.
What once was tough goes gentle at your hands.

I, who was feared, fearful of your glance,
cast down the head I held high, my eyes lowered,
humbly going only when commanded.

Do you like what you've tamed? The catch you've landed?
Enjoy it while it lasts. All falcons know:
however tough, how strong the gentling hands,
it's we, the thrown, in going, who command.



.

NaPoWriMo Poem Nine: What We Talk About When We Talk About Gove

Nobody's noticed so far.
The Education Sec is sure of that.
His subordinates say he prefers to stand.
His silence is interpreted as pensive;
his pose as friendly, jocular, on-message.

His choosing to remain in Cabinet Rooms
even after Dave and Gideon leave
is seen as diligent, though there are whispers
that it shows he wants the top job.
Nobody wants to make a fuss though.
They all know he's Rupert's boy.

When sure the coast is clear,
the under-secretaries lift him up
and fold back his supports.
One takes the legs, the other holds the shoulders,
turned so that his glazed eyes face the fly
of a Dege & Skiner three-piece,
his plain white backing turned to face the world.

At close of play they prop him in the office.
The cleaner, mute, Nigerian - is she Nigerian?
Somewhere like that, anyway - bumps the Henry's nozzle
against his cardboard feet. Says nothing. No-one knows.
Nobody knows exactly when the real Gove disappeared, where he is.
And he looks convincing. Lifelike. Nothing's been said so far.

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Today's NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem in another persona. Somehow, thinking through personalities to assume and write from, I thought of Michael Gove, the Education Secretary of Britain's unelected, mandate-less Tory-led Coalition Government. And then I remembered something I'd seen over the weekend. The NASUWT, Britain's largest teaching union, has been holding its conference this week, a conference traditionally visited by the Education Secretary. This year, Gove himself chickened out of going, and, deciding to compound his cowardice with a staggering degree of high-handed arrogance, he didn't send an underling from either his own Tory party, or the Liberal Democrats, very much the Richard Hammond to the Tories' Jeremy Clarkson.

It's usual for the General Secretary of the union to address the Education Secretary at conference. Sometimes this can be a jocular and friendly exchange, sometimes it can be more combative. Given that Gove's approach to Britain's education system seems to be that the way to improve it is to destroy it, it was pretty clear that this year Gove was going to have to sit there and take his lumps. The fact that the Secretary of Education couldn't take a telling-off from teacher gives you the measure of the man.

But this gave NASUWT General Secretary Chris Keates a problem. How could she deliver the address to Gove if he was too much of a scaredy-cat to show up? Fortunately, a solution was found. A cardboard cut-out of the Education Secretary was acquired, and Keates duly delivered her speech to this novelty Michael Gove standee.

This led me to wonder: what would it be like if the cardboard cut-out took over from Gove full-time? After all, in showing up to conference it had already shown considerably more courage than its real-life counterpart. And so...this is what resulted. I quite like the idea of Cardboard Gove in government. If nothing else, a 2D Education Secretary is unlikely to get any ideas about battling aliens.

What is the meaning of this, McKenna?

I've been posting my NaPoWriMo poems here almost as an afterthought to posting them on my Facebook notes page. This is largely because, between work and gigging, most of these poems have been written quite late at night. Now, with it being Sunday, the Easter weekend, family visited, gifts given and received, I have a little time to provide a little context and explanation. I'll try not to make it sound too much like the dissertation accompanying a Creative Writing portfolio.

(I attended a lecture on feminist psychoanalysis at university where the lecturer explained she had used up her allowance of film clips in other lectures, and would instead have to resort to saying 'cunt' [for entirely good feminist reasons] in order to shock us out of our undergraduate slumber. I'm no good at embedding film clips in blog posts, but I'll try to avoid saying 'cunt' as much as possible.)

Mirror, mirror - nothing to do with the film which is out at the moment, aside from the allusion to the Wicked Queen in the title. The prompt for the first day of NaPoWriMo was 'carpe diem' - the example given was Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'. I was in a pretty low mood at the time - I've just started a new run of laser sessions after a loooooong, unintended hiatus, and was getting a bit annoyed waiting for the hair to fall out. I found myself thinking that I wished I'd carped my diem a lot earlier with regard to transitioning. So I started the month on a nice down note. Go me!

Way Down - The prompt for day two was to write a poem inspired by the song at Number One on your birthday - tracked down using this site. Turned out that was 'Way Down' by Elvis Presley, which I've never heard. However I am familiar with Tori Amos' song 'The Way Down', from her album 'Boys for Pele', and this is basically a song about listening to that. Bit of a minor piece, but it's in the nature of the challenge that not everything you come out with will be brilliant.

Not the Royal Wedding (I'm Sure) - day three's prompt was to write an epithalamium, or wedding poem. So I wrote about what I and my friend Katie did on the day of the wedding of Good Prince Bill and Duchess Katie Godblessherhasnthersistergotanicearse, which was go out in the gay village of Newcastle and find the thing a complete bust. The village is pretty desperate at the best of times (well, that's my bridges with the Newcastle LGBT scene burned...) but up until we got to The Yard, by which point we were too tired and emotional to enjoy things, everywhere was dead. It's not really about the Royal Wedding, of course (hence the title, which is also a hangover from the Tori poem on day two, 'Not the Red Baron' being another Pele song); in fact, to my surprise, I found what I'd written was essentially a poem about trans exclusion from cis LGB spaces. If it's not too big-headed to say it, I'm quite proud of this one.

Scrawl from a Blue Room - this was a raid on my morning pages, basically hacked out to hit the one-poem-a-day deadline. The title was basically a cynical attempt to find some way of relating the piece to that day's suggestion of writing a twelve-bar blues, a challenge I opted not to take up, being entirely too much of a bluestocking to write blues. I said, I'm too much of a bluestocking to write me some blues. Couldn't write me no twelve-bar blues even if I choose, uh-huh, no way, no how, yeah.

Catflaps at Dawn - another morning pages raid. This day's prompt was 'openings', which functions here on two levels, obviously: catflaps are openings and dawn is the opening of the day. Do you see? Yeah. I'm geet clever like, me.

The Imp of the Perverse - the prompt was to write about animals. I chose to write about Animal from the Muppets. About halfway through the poem I thought it might have been cooler to write about Hawk and Animal from the Road Warriors/Legion of Doom, but by that point I'd committed. I may still write the Hawk 'n' Animal poem, though. I just need to decide if I include Rocco or not.

The Peculiar Beauty of Meat is a line that Francis Bacon used on occassion to explain the very carnal, brutal content of his pictures. This poem, based on yesterday's prompt to write a poem where everything is the same colour, seemed to be a good fit with that expression, not least because it references Bacon's 'Three Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion' and his series of screaming Popes inspired by Velasquez. There are also references in here to Louis Bunuel's film 'Un Chien Andalou', Diamanda Galas (la carne maccelata, 'the butcher's meat' is a line from her song 'Sono l'Antichristo') and, yes, Tori again.

And most recently, Big Fat Love Poem. I had a bit more time to write today, so started on this one before the prompt went live. It's another morning pages raid, based on a little stream-of-consciousness written after seeing an awesome-looking fat girl on the bus to work. It should, of course, go without saying that we lesbians never objectify other women sexually, not at all, not at all. So this poem is, of course, about my admiration of the way she defied patriarchal conventions of beauty. Yes. Of course. *serious lesbian feminist face*.

So, anyway, that's the context for the outpouring of poems below. If I have time next week, I'll include commentary underneath each poem when I copy it up here. For any I don't manage to include commentary for, well, join me for another catch-up post next week!