Holding together
dear skin it’s an undeniable fact
you’ve got thicker over the years
taken some punches and rolled
with them especially when blows
rained down just when it seemed
some of the bruises we sustained
were fading into ochre memories
blurring with the stretchmarks of
good times recalled and maybe
the hope that we had endured the
worst with a gallery of tattoos to
indelibly etch them in the past a
sour neural pathways created a
series of diversions to reroute
pain as the odd eyelid twitch or
flashback but we should have
realised that’s not our journey
because we hide an iceberg
under our slipstream exterior
a kraken lies beneath our ridged
cellulite reefs we deploy as shock
absorbers against both direct hits
and glancing shrapnel but this time
we were unaware alien spawn had
lodged in our lumpy breasts those
disregarded hillocks atop our life
scarred middle-aged body with its
seams bulges potholes and pitfalls
camouflaged by landscaped garments
so it came as a shock to both of us
that we were hosting a parasitic
stowaway a fire in the hold that will
burn us alive unless we agree we are
in this ride or die on a seek and destroy
mission to rout it out and nuke its clutch
of slyly deposited eggs with the last
weapons in our stash of life-experience
we will go together anyway besides
we have covered for one another all
this time so we have bitten the bullet
and clench the grenade with teeth
gritted but today a week after surgery
we are at some kind of momentary
peace with one another although a
Cheshire Cat scar grins under our
left areola and our armpit sports a
rictus smile its lips sewn together
stifled under sterile dressings as it
curses in the sweaty cave of sleep
but we try not to scratch the itch of
fear that lies under its puckered scabs
they are too close to our tremored
hands that tremble with the disbelief
of it clutching at straws of this our
new normal but we will raise them
highly in salutation as we enter the
ring for we are gladiators shields
borne aloft to deflect the bloodletting
scalpel sun we still hold ourselves
together backbone straight in the
arena leaving our pain’s imprint
lesioned on its smooth-raked hide
because dear skin it cannot ever
understand the cost of our victory
unless it too feels the healing pulse
of new blood under the crust of
loss the sap rising in our veins as
cells unfurl into spring leaves that
flutter and wince in reprieve’s chancy
breeze like flags of truce against
a fortress of battle-scarred bark
it is too hard-won to let the thirsty
sand drain our heart’s blood dry
Hall of mirrors
welcome to the fun palace of my ADHD mind
nothing is what it seems at this carnie show
with me as the main attraction in a hall of mirrors
reflecting the ugly truth that I’m the biggest freak
in town that’s why all the prurient rubber-neckers
roll up to point and stare at my splintered refracted
selves backscattered by the prism of prejudice to
hide in the shadows distorted on billboards only
half-human cryptid anomaly mutation misshape
chimera a genetic glitch a broken code askew out of
sequence a helter-skelter of twisted DNA roll up
punters pay your dues gloating as I’m supersized by
social stigma shrunken by belittling shame every tent
is affirmation of my multivalent monstrosity see me
how you like a mermaid with fin-rot from her battle
upstream against a tide of toxicity a tattooed lady
indelibly inked by her hidden disability a wolf-woman
hackles raised fangs bared biting back a living skeleton
her bones fractured by heedless comments a mechanical
fortune teller silenced by lies a sitting duck in the rifle
range peppered by shots to her open heart your mirror
shattered me your shards stabbed me in the back but
I am the dark glass that bares your souls the dagger
glance that pricks your thin-skinned consciences the
death stare that exposes your nakedness
Stand and deliver
Chance rolls its weighted dice
with a heavy hand to say your
number’s up
Fortune’s wheel throws you right
under the bus and spits you on
its daggered wheels
You’re at at a haphazard bend
in the road of mid-life stopped
in your tracks
Held up by an attention-grabbing
highwayman all guns blazing as
you’re ordered to
Stand and deliver so you hold up
your hands and submit yourself
to medical daylight
Robbery by masked footpads in
rubber gloves who pat you down
for hidden gems
In your underwired corsage and
surrender your heaving bosom to
unnatural devices
Spreadeagled for radiographers
in mammogram stocks seeking
treasure hoarded
In your ductal tissue only rearing
its ugly head in the wanted posters
of x rays
Either way you pay a price: yield
now and you might miss the Tyburn
tree’s black cap
But you’ll still face the Newgate
rabble of sawbones surgeons as
you’re stripped
Like Moll Flanders to your shift
and whorehouse stockings all
modesty askew
In a gin lane stupor with all your
body’s contours laid bare mapped
with inky lines
For the stagecoach scalpel to
follow up to the turnpike of your
lymph nodes
Ransacking your vaults as they
excise the coruscated cancerous
carbuncle
A nugget you fattened like the
liver of a Strasbourg goose a
golden egg
Engorged by bread ground from
your bones by a parasitic ogre
a philosopher’s stone
That cost you a king’s ransom
in time spent waiting for the knife
to cut you
Down from the gallows of fear
as you sweated in the condemned
cell growling
Savage as a baited bear tied to
the stake devoured by its impotent
inaction
Took your stand like a bareknuckle
fighter and woke punch drunk
to stagger
From the ring home in your thin
skin to lick your wounds and let
scars form
Over your bruised hide but your
rough diamond heart has not
lost its facets
Which catch the light and pulse
with the fire of raging blood’s
defiance
Kate Meyer-Currey moved to Devon in 1973. A varied career in frontline settings has fuelled her interest in gritty urbanism, contrasted with a rural upbringing, often with a slipstream twist. Since September 2020 she has had over a hundred poems published in print and online journals, both in the UK and internationally.
Her first chapbook ‘County Lines’ (Dancing Girl Press) came out in Autumn, along with her second Cuckoo’s Nest’ (Contraband Books).
Fun fact:
Kate has a tattoo of Robert De Niro on her left leg.