Bra Fitting, Mayfair
I wonder if this might be Lingerie Oz:
Toto, I don’t think we’re in Marks & Spencer anymore.
Behind the cubicle's red velvet drapes
the fitter twangs the backstrap of my bra
like David Gilmour appraising the strings
of a charity shop guitar.
I think of Oberon and Titania's elves, who,
for fear, creep into acorn cups and hide them there –
the fitter checks the label, laughs, then straps me
into something she says is a moulded balcony,
but seems to be a blue silk dragonfly's breath
as engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Then when I read the size, and shriek with joy,
she swings me round to face the mirror –
and Coleridge, how right you were. For these
did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree;
the film critic who wrote of Lara Croft
in Tomb Raider a dead heat in a Zeppelin race
might well have typed those lines for me,
and if I have a child I can offend Nigel Farage
with what he calls breastfeeding ostentatiously –
this means sparkly nipple tassels, one assumes,
and a playlist of appropriate showtunes
("Defying Gravity" from Wicked, obviously,
or Dolly Parton's "Islands in the Stream") –
but, for now, there's only one song I need:
"Man! I Feel Like a Woman" by Shania Twain.
Let's go girls, she says. Well, yes. Indeed.
This poem is from Rosalind's award-winning pamphlet, Black Mascara (Waterproof), published by The Poetry Business in February 2021. You can find it here.