Feminine Gospels key quotes

The Diet: breakfast

Skipping breakfast, lunch, dinner, thinner

The Diet: Anorexia’s

She was Anorexia’s true daughter

The Diet: Fat Woman

She chomped and chewed and gorged; inside the Fat Woman now, trying to get out

White Writing: vows

No vows written to wed you, I write them white

White Writing: palm

Palm against palm, lifeline, heartline

White Writing: sun

See last gold sun behind clouds

The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High: gurgle

A gurgle, a ripple, a dribble

The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High: atmosphere

Giggling, sniggering, snickering atmosphere, a laughing gas that seeped

Wish: clammy, limbs

But what if, in the clammy soil, her limbs grew warmer

Wish: push, door

Push open this heavy door she’ll be standing there in the sun

Death and the Moon: prayer

Unreachable by prayer, even if poems are prayers.

Death and the Moon: stretch

Tip of my toes and stretch, I could reach the edge of the moon

Work: bone

Sickened, died, lay in a grave, worked to the bone

Work: millions

Mother to millions now

Work: 90

Put in a 90-hour week

The Long Queen: spinsters

Spinsters and hags, matrons, wet nurses, witches, widows

The Long Queen: childhood

Childhood… blood… childbirth

The Long Queen: bled

Royal red, of intent, the pain when a girl first bled to be insignificant