Plum Read online

  Hollie McNish

  Plum

  PICADOR

  as if a million views on YouTube

  means those poems are the best . . .

  if I’d shat into a bucket

  I’d have ten million views instead

  – Hollie McNish

  for everyone in here

  and out there

  but especially for Aunty June

  and the knitting bee

  Contents

  (mind)

  How The World Should Be

  DANDELIONS

  LOVE

  LOVE!

  God

  MIDNIGHT MASS

  TRAP

  Cold

  Ice

  extract from And Now He’s Going to College

  AN UNNECESSARY CUP SIZE

  MACARENA

  ON BEING A TEENAGE GIRL IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

  YANKING

  MR KENT

  TRAINING DAY AT BOOTS THE CHEMIST

  UNLIKE THE LADS

  ORGASM

  extract from PMT

  extract from Naked Insecurities

  Blonde Jokes

  NUMBER SEVEN SEVENTH HEAVEN BURGER

  ESCAPING THE BULLIES

  WORKING IN THE PHOTO DEPARTMENT OF BOOTS THE CHEMIST

  NO BALL GAMES

  Politicians

  extract from Désirs

  POLITE

  TEAMMATES

  SAFE SEX EDUCATION

  HOT DOGS

  SIDE EFFECTS OF BEING TWENTY-ONE AND TOO EMBARASSED TO BUY A CONDOM OVER THE COUNTER FROM AN OLD MALE SHOPKEEPER IN FRANCE

  VOLUNTEERING IN A CAMBRIDGE BOOKSHOP

  Language Learning

  Beautiful

  BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT YOU DO

  WATCHING MISERABLE-LOOKING COUPLES IN THE SUPERMARKET

  AFTER PARTY / AFTER BIRTH

  THOUGHTS WHILE WATCHING A BABY GROW

  ASPIRATION

  DIVORCE PARTY

  CALL ON ME

  WHEN WE GOT TO THE BEACH

  Rules for Turning Thirty

  OASIS

  WHILE YOU CAN STILL DANCE

  BIRTHDAY LETTER

  MIDSOMER MURDER

  FAIRYTALES

  RESOLUTION

  AND WE TALK

  DRESSED

  HICCUPS

  PLASTIC BOTTLES

  BLOOD AND WATER

  FROZEN

  FINE

  VOLDEMORT

  NIPPLES

  SWEAT

  LADY

  COCOON

  BEES

  DUCKS

  DUNG BEETLES

  MAN

  A DEAD PIG, I MEAN?

  SHRINKING

  LITTLE THINGS

  PICKING PLUMS

  (body)

  i head

  ii mouth

  iii shoulders

  iv breasts

  v belly

  vi vulva

  vii bottom

  viii feet

  (mind)

  How The World Should Be

  (first poem I wrote down, aged 8)

  After a school litter picking-trip

  Meadows yellow, brown and green.

  Rainbows in the sky.

  No litter on the grass or fields.

  Butterflies flutter by.

  River water sparkly clean.

  No pollution in the air.

  That’s how the world should be.

  So try to take more care.

  DANDELIONS

  (written aged 30)

  For mum and your advice:

  ‘I love you to the moon and back, Hollie

  but you are no more important than a tree’

  when it all seems too much

  and i wonder why we’re here

  and i think about the sun

  and i wonder why it’s there

  and my daughter points to space

  and the emptiness upsets me

  and i lament my lack of god

  and i wish that one would find me

  and i worry what is out there

  and i wonder what the point is

  and i panic about death

  and i panic it’s all pointless

  and i wonder when space stops

  and what the fuck we’re on this rock for

  i think of strawberries in the summer

  firmed and ripe and juicy

  and how perfectly dandelion seeds

  are made to helicopter breezes

  procreating across fields

  and i remind myself

  this is not all about you, hollie

  LOVE

  Mum held out her palm that day. Runner-bean seeds. I was about eight years old and my brother ten. Mum marked us a small patch of soil each and we shoved our index fingers poke by poke into the dirt, dropping one seed into each hollow. We danced across the garden, watering cans tumbling. We waited impatiently. We made the seed sachets into flags, sellotaped to lolly sticks. We labelled them in our best writing. Then we stood back, triumphant as our own moon-landing marks.

  Each day after school we ran out to watch, as ever so slowly sprouts crept through the soil. Mum stuck in a gigantic wooden pole amongst each of our patches of shoots and we fidgeted as plants began winding their way up. My brother noticed flowers first, orange bursts which soon blossomed and stuck out their runner-bean tongues at us.

  We stuck our tongues out too.

  My brother began to pick and crunch. I huffed. Mum said some things take more time, Hollie as I wracked my brain for what I had done wrong. Not one flower. I watered; waited some more. Then one morning, my brother squealed, raced into my bedroom, grabbed my hand and ran me excitedly outside. From nothing, my plant had very mysteriously sprouted twenty, if not more, identical and gigantic runner beans over night

  I didn’t question it

  just stared – held my brother’s hand

  beaming with delight

  i hadn’t seen you in your nightie, mum

  sneaking out in moonbeams, clutching

  torch, bought beans and sewing kit

  i didn’t see the threads at first

  green, camouflaged

  meticulous, your running stitch

  i didn’t see your slippers soiled;

  back hunched, weary

  in that tricky light

  just stood with my big brother

  held his hand tight;

  loving life

  LOVE!

  (written aged 9)

  I got given a big sheet of stickers one day when I was nine. One of the stickers was of two parrots staring at each other with a glittery red love-heart between them. The parrots were lined thickly in bright sparkling gold. I felt straight away it was the most magical sticker I had ever been given. I wrote a poem for my mum and dad and nervously titled it ‘LOVE!’. I remember feeling very grown-up and carefully sticking the parrot sticker to the left of the title to mark how serious I was about this. I thought the line ‘love is the poor man selling the beer’ was really cool. I had never seen an old man selling beer. I still haven’t. I don’t know if it even exists as a job. But I liked that line a lot back then because it had alcohol in it, something I knew I wasn’t really meant to talk about. After writing the last line, I immediately chickened out of giving it to mum or dad. I put it into a maroon folder and hid it under my bed, feeling embarrassed I’d written it and petrified someone would find it. A few days later I moved it into a separate ‘secret’ pocket at the back of the folder.

  Love is the moonlight shining clear gold,

  Love is the beauty you cannot hold,

  Love is the flower that shines on your face,

  Love is silk and love is lace,

  Love is the ship sailing on by,

  Love is the su
nset that brightens the sky,

  Love is the birds that nest in the trees,

  Love is the soft, whispery breeze,

  Love is the fire bringing warmth to your heart,

  Love is the people that will never part,

  Love is the oak tree, standing alone,

  Love is the pebble, love is the stone,

  Love is the animals all over the world,

  Love is the star, silvery pearled,

  Love is the beauty in which I seek,

  Love is the old man, poor and weak,

  Love is the wind blowing around,

  Love is the grass on the ground,

  Love is the river, shallow and clear,

  Love is the poor man selling the beer,

  Love is the rain, love is the snow,

  Love is the one thing that will never go,

  Love is the story you are told,

  Love is the warmth, love is the cold,

  Love is the torch leading the way,

  Love is the thoughts you have every day,

  Love is the sea, frothy and blue,

  Please believe me, I love you.

  God

  (written aged 10)

  After the first Christmas Eve midnight mass I remember

  God is all forgiving.

  He only wishes well.

  But if he doesn’t like you

  I’m afraid you burn in hell.

  MIDNIGHT MASS

  (written aged 30)

  i still remember the look he handed me with the bread

  said those who do not eat it

  will go to hell

  said those who do not believe

  will go to hell

  said those who eat it for false reasons

  will go to hell

  i wondered sitting sweating

  what was worse –

  knowing i was going

  – or showing everybody else

  TRAP

  the woods were dressed in autumn

  we were eight and nine and twelve and ten

  we dug a hole to catch the grown-ups in!

  (criss-crossed twigs, laid leaves on top)

  we hid, spying from our holly den

  we dug a hole to catch the grown-ups in!

  the dog fell in; broke her leg

  silently we hung our heads

  – headed slowly home

  the crunch of each leaf underfoot

  now clear as cracking bone

  A lad I was ‘seeing’ at school called me an ice queen when I was about thirteen. Not viciously, just a defensive shun after, I think, I either pulled out of snogging while walking awkwardly holding hands round the netball court at break – or didn’t want to get fingered at the house party/bowling alley/quasar centre. Something like that, I can’t remember the exact event. All I know is that I took it on board far too deeply and for years afterwards wrote poems comparing myself to cold things or things that needed to defrost, then later, poems about how love had finally melted me.

  Cold

  (written aged 13)

  I am an ice cube,

  I am new lying snow,

  I fall into my angel

  And I’m never gonna go.

  I’m winter waters,

  Below the frozen lake,

  I’m hail and I’m sleet.

  I am the first snowflake.

  I am a tub of ice cream

  Waiting frosty to be sold.

  I am a carving chipped from ice.

  Basically, I’m cold.

  Ice

  (written aged 14)

  I am an ice cube waiting to melt

  My coldness will thaw

  As I fall to the floor

  And my softening trickles be felt.

  I’m a flower waiting to be smelt.

  extract from And Now He’s Going to College

  (written aged 17)

  Now he’s going, thinks he knows me

  Wasted time, never unfroze me

  Never felt the willing heat from me

  Can’t melt impossibility

  Never felt. Frosted eyes can melt

  Stomach sick and sore

  I long to thaw the rest

  AN UNNECESSARY CUP SIZE

  One of my strongest memories of early secondary school was in Year 7, sobbing silently in the girls’ loos as I tried on a bra for the first time. I didn’t want to ask my mum or any grown-up to take me shopping for one because I had no physical reason to wear one and I already had some crop tops. I wrote to my cousin Tracy instead. She sent me a parcel down from Glasgow with an old bra of hers. I remember it more vividly than any other item of clothing I’ve had: a proper bra with a proper pingable bra strap, white cotton, a tiny metal clip on the back and small pinky-red strawberries printed all over it. I never thanked Tracy as much as I wanted to. I took it into school with me to try it on. I’ve never felt as strange in my skin as that day. Perhaps pregnancy, but at least I could talk about that more openly and had lots of complimentary support. Morphing into an adult’s body feels so odd. I tried to capture it here, but I can’t.

  i hoped that my embarrassment would dissolve into grown-up-ness

  instead i stood all lunch break long – examining this fledgling flesh

  in the blessed space of cubicles – oh sacred locks allowed in school!

  – girls’ loos, shirt off, muffled sobs what a stupid fool

  my backbone pinched so many times, as schoolboy flirting searched our shirts

  i did not need a bra yet. fact. chest flatter than the misread earth

  i rubbed the stretchy straps between my fingertips in slight disgust

  unclipped the metal clip slipped it on clipped the clip back up

  unclipped the clip again as fast screwed it up clenched the ball

  teardrops licked mascara fixed i strolled across the hall to class

  translucent shirt-back faced the lads absorbed their eyes i stared ahead

  tried to solve the fractions nipples palpable as pencil lead

  because i want a strap for boys to ping was no reason for a first bra trip

  i shut my bedroom door that night waited for the hall to dim

  silence mirror bedside lamp

  clip unclip clip unclip clip

  MACARENA

  the lips we opened at the school discos tasted of sweeties

  as tongues slipped in uncomfortably

  manoeuvring saliva around each other’s throats

  pushed too deep inside, at times, we gagged

  music-tempo-shift-signals-mid-school-disco-slow-dance

  now little boys recoil to

  line the edges of the room

  – a centrifugal dread

  the girls – darted to the loos –

  eventually sneak back

  half the track now passed

  vomit rising just below a gag

  as the mini men now ask

  the mini women for a dance

  some nervous laughs

  till timid arms

  touch behind each other’s backs

  kangol flat caps now flipped back

  kappa caps like finishing-school books

  balance high on curtained heads

  ‘I’m gorgeous’ gold logo tops

  stretch across girls’ chests

  attempt at sexiness

  short boys dance with left ear pressed on taller girls’ ‘breasts’

  shorter girls use taller boys’ shoulders as chin rests

  boys and girls not dancing, watch. mock. deny distress

  oversized US basketball vests almost reach the boys’ ankles

  feet piddle round

  in pathetic, clumsy, magnificent, circles

  to east 17’s best lullaby

  brian harvey may be a skank, we’d concede,

  but tony mortimer is a piano genius

  two minutes

  torment

  bliss

  before the macarena kicks in

  lines of us n
ow grinning

  follow suzanne

  changing moves from

  two hip-holds

  and a half-turn jump

  to two pats of our crotch

  and a fake lick of our palms

  to mimic cunnilingus

  we giggle consciously; the boys stare

  none of us knowing how it actually goes down

  down there

  then we race to the tuck shop;

  um bongo and gummy bears

  ON BEING A TEENAGE GIRL IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

  waiting was the worst

  mud on our shoes – scuffed

  arm to arm – elbows interlocked

  as we lined up at the far edge

  of the furthest field

  like a flimsy hawthorn hedgerow

  we’d seen that tractor

  yielding pace from danni’s garden

  we raced the public byway path

  turnstiles turned

  scaled the padlocked gates

  our smiles and panted laughter

  fading into nervous breaths

  as the speck on the horizon widened

  panicking in case he caught us

  before everybody was ready to

  go!

  trousers then pants pulled low

  as fourteen fourteen-year-old arses

  signalled flesh across the field

  then

  sprinting

  back

  to danni’s house

  before

  he had a chance

  to tell us off

  looking back now

  he probably liked it quite a lot

  YANKING

  For a very good friend still!

  apparently

  ‘up and down’

  did not mean

  like a lever

  like a door handle

  like a joystick

  like a casino slot machine

  it meant

  up and down

  fingers curved around

  gentle strokes from shaft to tip

  we only learnt this

  after she had tried

  the alternative

  yanking motion

  and almost snapped

  her boyfriend’s dick

  we gathered; listened

  stroked her back

  our impulse-perfumed shirts