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Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: New Cloth
by Ankh Spice
I'm lucky to be married to a wonderful writer and human being who happens to be a trans woman. I wrote 'New Cloth' as an unrepentant love poem, in answer to the bigotry and anti-trans sentiment that persists. The distress this causes trans people is immense. I wanted to write a poem that gave people who had perhaps given up on love a clear message that it does exist, and no human being deserves to feel unmade.
Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: New Cloth
Your pattern pinned itself to the fray of me
the first day. Not yet stitched, aligning
fragile tissue, judging bias – the wounded
cut carefully
always holding their breath.
When they remade you, I slept
on a hospital couch with your dress, bundled
like a woolen heart, to my nose. Five hours
inhaling-exhaling bargains
a short time to outfit a whole woman
into her own dear self.
We tied knots with every colour we could find.
Understand, love always gets down to the wisp
beyond fabric, to stroke
the finest thread of a person – our making looms
us legacies of holes –
you fear cutting yourself short, me
born running with scissors, and all of us
rippling fast towards the great unravelling
Yet the great thumping treadle of a heart can still say
now you’re mending – billow with the wind.
Recording provided as part of Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020. Used by permission of the author.
A special thank you to our WordView 2020 poets.
Chair of the Judging Panel, Imtiaz Dharker, says: “The hundreds of entries we received blew in to the Archive like a breath of pure, unpolluted air from all over the world, revealing something of the time we are living in, some telling it straight, some slant. It was exciting to check in to the Poetry Archive’s Youtube channel every morning and come upon one unexpected voice after another."
See the collectionWatch the full Wordview 2020 playlist