Issue 6: January 2004

Paul Batchelor | Zoë Brigley | Olivia Cole | Sasha Dugdale | Anna Woodford

ANNA WOODFORD

The One That Got Away

Some fairytales say she jumped
out the window and ran home to her mother,
never to stray ever after.

Some say she came round to the idea
that her prince wouldn't come and settled
for shared living with the bears.

An Internet site describes her turning
into a glamour model called Goldie
who likes a good hiding

or, maybe, she's not out of the woods yet
and her hair went white
slim-picking through the neighbourhood bins.

In Prague, an astronomer saw a light in the sky
and christened it for her
— and his mystery blonde girlfriend —

The Goldilocks Variable. It's an elusive star.
It isn't always shining. Sometimes it appears
to have vanished from the night's curtain-call.

My Legs

In tights, my legs remind me
of my mother's. For years I wore
her tights when mine had run out.
My sister light-fingered them too
so someone else's knees and bottom
has usually bagged a pair first,
the waistbands were nicked with nail scissors,
cat's hair pierced all of our soles.
In tights, my legs could belong
to my mother. They could uncurl
from under me and go and do
her bidding. They could be
her legs that laddered while carrying
me and my brother — pregnancy silver
lining the sheer denier inside each thigh.
I take comfort like a child
from my own woman's body and the
intimate relationship it shares
with my mother. In tights, my legs could
go on for ever. Each right foot stretches
in front of me like the rest of my life.

'The One That Got Away' was first published in the Times Literary Supplement.

Anna Woodford has received a Blue Mountain Center Residency (New York), an Eric Gregory Award, a Hawthornden Fellowship, an Arvon/Jerwood Apprenticeship and a Tyrone Guthrie Centre Residency. In 2001 she received a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North. Her pamphlet The Higgins' Honeymoon is published by Driftwood Publications (2001).