Sometimes, he said, it’s as if she just sticks
out a hunk of bread, and says butter it –
and they do.
But that’s just like her.
I didn’t defend her (those eyes, that hard mouth –
a ruthless child: desperate, defensive).
After all, I don’t
like her.
I’ve seen what she did (he said), she hurt
them to a man, those men. How she
hurt. I wanted to be
just like her.
Elly McDonald 
November 11, 2021 at 4:02 am
Dear Elly,
It is very good to read such a collection of poems, especially some drafts of some of them, and comments. I very much appreciate the smaller scale of some of the poems. Their condensed shape brings out the distinctive depth of the objects in the poems, reminding me of Hopkins distinctive phrase – the “inscape” of things.
I trust you and your cat are both doing well and enjoying the opening up of the world.
With best wishes,
Ian
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November 11, 2021 at 4:25 am
Oh dear. You shouldn’t be getting multiple versions. But I did amend most of these to add in the date (year) written, or a blog category (Poetry) or tag (Elly McDonald Writer) or to fix minor typos. These are poems written after mid-’85 when my little book came out, and therefore not included there, written late 1985 or 1986. They were painful to write and are painful for me to read, and in some cases I’d forgotten they existed or that I’d kept a copy. Today someone asked to read a particular poem and I was surprised I hadn’t put it on my blog site, which led me to hunt it down, which led to the forgotten poems.
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