Women in Progress
(an exultation for the 14 year old girls in my poetry workshops)
Gemma would take her hair-straighteners
to a desert island but she’s no stereotype.
I hope she nails her sonnet and that lad in 2009.
Maxie has a puppy-dog hidden
in the kennel of her chest. Publicly
she thumps her jewellery, roaring ‘your mum!’
I hope she acts herself in 2009.
Salena’s best friend betrayed her. Now
she must audition new friends in the lunch-hall.
I hope she finds hundreds in 2009.
Zoe shields her largeness with her library books
- Point Horror - walks the weaker kids home
through the path of least-bullies.
I hope her mum gets better in 2009.
People think Rachel’s got a Loser badge
pinned to her hoodie but I’ve read her poetry
and she’s got the perfect simile for sky.
I hope she goes to sixth form in 2009.
Because you’ll break my heart, 2009,
if you show me again those tired teachers flexing red pens.
And a drowning poet saying ‘you could be anything’
to an oversized class in an undersized room.
Don’t show me the future in their faces:
girls waving pom-poms at the fringes of the football field,
girls feeling fat behind tills. A knockers joke
in every Christmas cracker. Tell an honest one, 2009.
Tell me the one about the woman
who dug a tunnel through the system and set forth.
She had panda-eyes but an independent tear.