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Self Portrait
Her father’s curls, which despite tantrums at the hairdressers,
mother kept shorn, citing Twiggy as a cropped haired beauty.
At 16, she entered a hair growing contest with Rapunzel,
but her adult locks were neither curly nor straight
and refused to learn new styles painstakingly copied from magazines,
‘Lazy hair’ the stylist at Vidal Sassoon labelled it
like a teacher issuing a bad school report.
Now middle aged she owns £100 straighteners
powerful as industrial laundry irons.
Nevertheless needs conjurer’s props of hats and scarves
to repel damp that still spins her hair into candyfloss.
Her father’s skin too, waking up one morning
at 13 to find the acne fairy had paid out generously,
coating a glaze of grease over her face like candied fruit.
Class mates who had blossomed into Jenny Agutter
were entertained by her lunchtime application of phlegm green mask
followed by the monstrous peeling of her face like a Roald Dahl witch.
For years her boyish breasts were a mental double mastectomy.
No attempts made with push up bras to put them on display
for fear of glimpsing an extra bump.
Jumped as if touching another woman’s
when she brushed them with her hand,
and like a Victorian prude never looked at them.
Then at 40 nature gave her a boob job
confirming unfortunately that she has her mother’s breasts.
Attempts at self examination find their touch loathsome as dead flesh.
Envies women who can joyfully pet theirs ,
because hers are a pair of time bombs waiting to go off.
