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Faye Alexandra Rose
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the poet
Faye Alexandra Rose is the author of four chapbooks: When Memory Fades, Incognito, Mortal Beings and Pneuma – the last of these shortlisted for the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Faye's forthcoming release, Wild Women, is due out with Sunday Mornings at the River.
the poems
A Force of Nature
We are Earth’s daughters, hips like rolling hills,
moss-laced breasts quench your eternal thirst.
We contain the ocean, unpredictable beauty,
one pull of the moon creates a ruinous storm.
We weaponize life’s sting like the blazing sun
—even wildflowers can survive barren lands.
We grow lungs like the roots of a birch tree,
and nest fragility out the reach of beasts.
Womb of the State
TW: SA
Humanity is no longer human
when people dig out their souls
with coat hangers.
Fearful of others with needles for hands
waiting to thread their bodies
to a backward piece of legislation.
Two lines on plastic equate to a cross,
righteousness woven with power
like thorns in the skull.
Wombs are crime scenes wrapped in
yellow tape, for conceiving from brutality
and not from being raped.
Whilst stained white flags sway
in limp hands, cursed tongues pray
for their bodies to be cut free.
My estranged father
was diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s disease
Dad, if I can still call you that, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt entitled enough,
for your silhouette has always stood empty within photographs
but your presence has always lingered, like a punch in the gut,
as I’ve lived my life mourning a man who has never been
and never will be.
For I heard whispers through grapevines that your brain is a ball of yarn,
your memory unravelling, forgiving you for all past sins.
And I’ve spat bile at empty pages since I read that news,
but each time it only ever seems to poison me
as I pull at my skin to prove to myself that I’m real,
trying to fathom that you no longer remember I exist.
And I clung on for dear life Dad, I did, I never lost hope
that I could hear your voice for the first time, an apology.
But I must continue living with the pain of being forgotten,
You don’t know I exist; I didn’t exist; I don’t exist.
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb
