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.

 

In these times, when we are distracted

    by our own proximity to viral overload

        is it worth not watching Gran clock off in a care home bubble

            as our younger taxable skin is more worth preserving -

                although for whom we are not sure;

                    and think not  - that incoming refugees need mental health support,

                        nor think about who is judging the endangered species

                            nor ice caps value, nor NHS workers,

                                nor our loved children's needs, or even their children,

                                    or even THEIRS,

although we’d all be yelling, if we were them.



And, we are them.