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Pratibha Castle: a poem



Knickers

 

By the river Liffey she 

stepped out of satin knickers

sighing like peachy petals 

around her ankles, elastic –

growing lax – having let her down.

 

Second sibling 

out of ten, and wise 

to the workings of a secret, 

she smiled, and

smothering the memory

of a nun’s echoing scold,

stuffed them, her touch

ambiguous as roses,

into a cardigan pocket,

together with a ladybird, 

brushed unseen 

off her Mary Janes.

 

Dismissive of the unmaking  

inherent in a ladybird hex, 

she strode forth

with a flounce 

of chestnut hair, flushed cheeks,

on the arm of the young man 

who would be my father, 

across grudging grass 

into a future fragrant, green 

as a whispering willow's promises

divined from the morning’s dregs. 

 

That girl's laugh, her shadowy tales,

persist, coast with a hawk 

on silent currents, sustenance 

for a skylark's silvery beck, 

eulogies of a universe  

where love is endless song 

and no sour notes.


This poem first appeared in Drawn to the Light in 2022. Pratibha Castle, an Irish born poet, lives in West Sussex. Widely published in journals and anthologies including Agenda, International Times, IS&T, One Hand Clapping, Spelt, Tears In The Fence, London Grip, High Window and forthcoming in Stand, she has been longlisted and given special mention in numerous competitions including the Bridport Prize, Indigo Press and Welsh Poetry Competitions. Her debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Press 2022) is joined by Miniskirts in The Waste Land (Hedgehog Poetry Press 2023), a young woman’s search for meaning and identity in the Notting Hill and India of the swinging sixties.

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