In these times, don’t forget
to scrape the back near your tonsils
insert up your nostril as far as possible
rotate until your eyes water
deposit in the tube break the stick
press all the air from the bag unpeel silver foil close. Easy.
I haven’t just been tested – I was judged before this
when I wasn’t a groupie, I would suck lyrics for meaning
erecting my own greenhouse, thank you for asking
didn’t make them tea when I was the only girl in a hard hat
failed to drive around his kidney beans that meant
we’d end in a bath not a driving license
and aged 18, disgusted with Oxbridge
dropped out of a class race
I couldn’t win.
But hey, they could no longer refuse to serve me in a bar.
If I saw the abusive necklace marks,
the broken door, the intimidating porn;
it’s true I opened his favourite biscuits to go stale and let my cat sleep on his shoes
speaking before two hundred pairs of bald heads with colonial ears
as I lost a foetus and she gained
a tiny cancer in her feline body
and I didn’t give back the Government
Enterprise Allowance grant
when they asked if my poem had the word ‘vulva’ in it.