Biographical Details
Pauline is a Liverpool-based writer and poet. She was Poet-in-Residence with Open Eye Gallery (2016 – 2019) and her recent pamphlet The Weight of Snow (Maytree Press, 2021) won the 2021 Saboteur Award for best poetry pamphlet. She has an MA in Creative Arts and a PhD from Liverpool University. She was recipient of a 2021 MaxLiteracy award for a project working with Open Eye Gallery and Wirral Hospitals’ School.
Penance
(15 May, 1980)
I was so dressed up,
made-up, ready to meet
the other witches that night.
There was no rain
though I remember rain. No bus
though I was sure I got there
in time. Miles away, too afraid,
at 16 to phone home for a lift.
I had the taste of red wine in my mouth
like artists in the novels
I read, or the books I dreamed
I would write.
I pictured the broom
fixed to Carol’s wall, imagined
how she made it to Morocco
and back, to cut out
all traces of John,
root and branch.
I’m glad to be alive.
I don’t want to remember.
I don’t wish to say what happened.
I’m sorry I got into the car.
© Pauline Rowe
Drowned in Dust
Half a league from my childhood church.
they raise my unbreathing head,
carry my corpse to the Angel and Elephant.
“You’re too young,” shouts the landlord,
“we’ll lose our licence. Come in.”
The women drinking there are dull with gin.
The medical assistant shakes his head:
“Too late for electricity – she’s dead.”
The women clean my nostrils with soft strips of cloth
leave black rags like tadpoles, blood-clots, tar –
these late ablutions don’t take them far.
The medical assistant raised his hand:
“Does anyone possess a magic wand?”
He shoved a bellows pipe up my nose,
blocked my mouth, tried to inflate my lungs.
Breath, the principal thing to be attended to
was stopped with dust. This dust – your sprinkling,
it turned my lungs to glue. The dust was you.
Life did not appear. The medic lit his briar:
“she is full dead of dust,” he murmured, “little liar.”
It was then they put my body on the fire.
© Pauline Rowe
Bad Dream 5
Sex with Strangers
is a regular inconvenience:
the ones who smell
like the butchers in the precinct
the ones who refuse to wash
or use talc for emergencies
the ones who hold remnants
of food in their teeth
who pee out of the window at dusk –
though I haven’t lived on the fifth floor
for fourteen years –
When I wake up
the shame is like ink
on soft paper
more or less contained
as it spreads slightly, slowly
like a rumour.
© Pauline Rowe
Bad Dream 9
Given my girth, it was awkward
the endeavour to carry my own spare bodies
in thin cases, the machete blunted,
once they were filleted –
cumbersome layers of flesh
in the leather portmanteau –
designed for authentic sketches
and original works of fine art.
There were gouts of blood
on the weapon’s blade
though I failed to find
compelling evidence of a crime.
I looked but couldn’t see
my bones on the road.
I heard the laughter of corvids
behind the box hedge
and the shrill scream of a cat
in our reclusive neighbour’s yard.
© Pauline Rowe