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10th March, 2023

Friday Poem – ‘My Birth’ by Pascale Petit


Following International Women’s Day, this week’s Friday Poem is ‘My Birth’ by Pascale Petit from her collection What the Water Gave Me: Poems After Frida Kahlo.

My Birth
I swivel my emerging head
so you can recognise me
by my joined-up eyebrows.
My mother’s face is covered
with a sheet, so are her breasts –
they will never feed me.
Through the pink fog, I can see
with these baby painter’s eyes
how bare a room can be,
dominated as ours is by that picture
of the weeping Virgin.
Even my unhappiest paintings
will be joyful. Look at how
I wear my mother’s body
like a regional dress –
its collar gripping my neck.
For now, her legs are my arms,
her sex is my necklace.