Ann Vaughan-Williams
Breast-feeding
My sister arrived between my father’s brown
pages, one of us on each arm and hip
in the flower-decked armchair he filled:
yes, I sat in the hair of his arm,
the breeds of the pigs and cattle lit up
as he turned ‘The Farmer and Stockbreeder’
tome in his lap, with my bewilderment,
mother absent at bedtime.
My sister was born. Everyone recalled
they made my mother leave the cricket pitch,
drove her to the hospital,
she must have her baby, was caught out.
So there it was not waking to
the snout of the breast
which I’d have snapped up
but it was not decent
to burst upon the white bathroom,
pristine enamel, not just tin,
where she sat on my mother’s white tied apron,
refused the milky taps.
I am very drawn to pigs,
it’s the snouts, like
that first nipple in the white.
I’m for piglets feeding
in pictures, and for real in the long low
grunting dark of the long-boat barn
with the roof of grass that drips
to the ground and holds a world,
its own world grown in the dead grass.
pages, one of us on each arm and hip
in the flower-decked armchair he filled:
yes, I sat in the hair of his arm,
the breeds of the pigs and cattle lit up
as he turned ‘The Farmer and Stockbreeder’
tome in his lap, with my bewilderment,
mother absent at bedtime.
My sister was born. Everyone recalled
they made my mother leave the cricket pitch,
drove her to the hospital,
she must have her baby, was caught out.
So there it was not waking to
the snout of the breast
which I’d have snapped up
but it was not decent
to burst upon the white bathroom,
pristine enamel, not just tin,
where she sat on my mother’s white tied apron,
refused the milky taps.
I am very drawn to pigs,
it’s the snouts, like
that first nipple in the white.
I’m for piglets feeding
in pictures, and for real in the long low
grunting dark of the long-boat barn
with the roof of grass that drips
to the ground and holds a world,
its own world grown in the dead grass.
Ann Vaughan-Williams born in Uganda which she left
at the age of fourteen.
at the age of fourteen.
Page(s) 42
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The