Issue 22: Cat Woodward
Potential for Child-bearing as the Condition for the Worship of Woman-as-goddess
What’s that, She splits to become?
Moon and Waters plough up the cheerless self
that had languished with the weasel in the pennyroyal.
Which is to say, baby drags her Mother out with her,
blinking as though from Hell.
Such shrewd knowledge
drips from the dark
made of meat and fire and value.
A unicorn might weep joyful tears of feverfew -
O virgins, you tight hard buds of somewhere,
I believe in you.
Spell for Unconditional Love
to speak it plainly
makes sympathy die
like any baby bird ever.
modesty, disfigured and badly-dressed
touts a pain, the liar.
or it’s me, girl gone old and bad
going around, writing poems on the rocks
saying:
‘but I too must be adored!’
while the rain rains, smoothing stone bald
going:
never never never
never.
Cat Woodward is a feminist lyric poet. Her first collection, Sphinx (Salò Press) was published in 2017, her second collection Blood. Flower. Joy! is due from Knives, Forks and Spoons Press in 2019. In 2018 she won the Ivan Juritz Prize for new works of creative modernism. Her PhD (UEA) is in robot and lyric voice. She has been published in Datableed, Lighthouse, Adjacent Pineapple, And Other Poems, The Interpreter's House, Ink, Sweat and Tears and others.
Copyright © 2019 by Cat Woodward, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
