and he held me in his palms
a slippery yolk of thirteen
soft golden thighs the tap tap
at the shell for me to slip through I
remember a day in the garden my fingers yellow
from turmeric and dirt I
blew my nose and read the mucus like a wise
woman reads tea leaves
shaking in soot and yesterday’s breath
I woke everyday to the sound of a chariot a yellow glow all around
the aching light between my thighs
as loud as sun soft as yolk and he held me
in his palms the tap tap
at the shell for me to slip through my body
split into parts of one heel of my foot in the ocean an eyelid fleeing
like tumble weed
I resembled a self un-sewn a child’s drawing in a hospital room
when I left that room I was wonky
walking the way a stain would run
yellow and sticky he held
me in his palms the tap tap at the shell for me to slip through
my crooked shape in albumen it was eight
years before my pink flesh yawned and grew limbs that for the
first time would not flee at the sight of me
I birthed this unfamiliar creature
fed it biscuits and milk
its belly yellow and swirling its black eyes
hungry for its mother’s meat I held on
to that feeling her of holding her of holding her
the tap tap at the shell for her to slip through
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2021. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor for 2021 was Hugh McMillan.
Editor’s note:
I love the structure here each line like a breath being taken or caught, the whole piece like a grim fairy story which feels all too real, is all too real. This is an ambitious piece and reminds me most of Anne Sexton but it is not derivative. This is a horrifying, startling poem full of viscous imagery and is a challenge to take in. It has great jarring linguistic diversity ‘wonky’ vying with ‘a self un-sewn’. The whole piece disturbs, as it is meant to do. It’s an outstanding piece of work.
Author’s note:
‘And he held me in his palms’ examines the disconnect between self and body, and the traumatic experience of navigating your own body after it has been made a stranger to you. This is based on personal experience, feeling like my body was a thing that didn’t belong to me, only to be consumed by others, whether physically, intellectually, or through the white male gaze. The refrain of ‘and he held me in his palms / the tap tap at the shell for me to slip through’ uses the image of the egg to depict corruption of innocence; being coerced into adulthood, and the passivity to bodily agency that this inevitably leads to.
