Alison Hill: Featured Poet

The Women of Dorich House

i. Rapunzel

 

The head of the girl with pigtails

has been placed halfway up

the soft crimson staircase.

 

Her back to the window,

she dreams of a sky she cannot see,

trees she cannot climb.

 

The head of a girl with pigtails

catches our eye as we ascend,

again as we go down.

 

Her patina gaze is unnerving:

she is girlhood without the games,

skipping without the rope.

 

ii. Limbo

 

Instead of the pupil, two staring blanks;

enclosed, encased, embalmed.

 

I lived once – my eyes were the colour

of those tulips over there, fading to violet.

 

I am no-woman, everywoman, my case

has no name. Visitors circle in hope,

 

check out my eyes as you have done,

notice the tulips and move on.

 

iii. Awakening

 

I saw the sculpture before the name;

body of a woman playful as a kitten.

 

Mid-roll in abandon, legs in freefall

stomach splayed for all to see. Sinuous,

 

graceful, eyes closed against the world,

she holds the apple aloft –

 

                          Mine, all mine she says

 

 

Alison Hill runs Rhythm & Muse at the Ram Jam Club in Kingston and is currently

Poet in Residence at Kingston Libraries.

 

Her poems have appeared in a range of magazines and anthologies and her first pamphlet collection, Peppercorn Rent, was published by Flarestack in 2008. She is one half of Speranza, with Judith Watts, and has performed her poetry at various venues from the cornerHOUSE to the Roundhouse. Alison Hill and www.rhythmandmuse.org