{"id":307,"date":"2011-07-06T19:27:52","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T19:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=307"},"modified":"2011-07-06T19:27:52","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T19:27:52","slug":"pat-borthwicks-katya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/pat-borthwicks-katya\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat Borthwick's 'Katya'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katya<\/span>

Not of my own choosing<\/span>
do my paps darken like muzzles.<\/span>
My belly slowly swells.<\/span>
I cannot see my valley now.<\/span>
I crave for lassi<\/span>
but they bring us rusty water<\/span>
in the bottom of a can.<\/span>

They come and come,<\/span>
day, night, day,<\/span>
unbuttoning <\/span>
as the door slaps against the stucco.<\/span>
They leave our thighs and faces<\/span>
crusty with their stink.<\/span>

And after me,<\/span>
they hump across on to my mother,<\/span>
covering her shrunken face<\/span>
with her heavy dirndl skirt.<\/span>
She is dry, dry.<\/span>
Her womb is a husk.<\/span>

Each day I am ripening.<\/span>
I do not want this cuckoo<\/span>
fluttering its rabid wings<\/span>
in my darkness.<\/span>
I can see its wild eyes beneath my skin.<\/span>
It will suck me dry as rock.<\/span>

Yet, I have practised its birth \u2013<\/span>
how I will keep my legs far apart,<\/span>
my eyes screwed shut,<\/span>
then roll it with my heel in the dust<\/span>
kicking it and its afterbirth<\/span>
down the mountainside.<\/span>

Or, how I will say, <\/span>Give me my baby<\/span>,<\/span>
and boy or girl, call it Katya.<\/span>
That was my mother\u2019s name.<\/span>

<\/p>\n


*Pat Borthwick<\/span><\/a> lives in rural East Yorkshire and has published three full-length collections. 'Katya' is from her latest, <\/span>Admiral FitzRoy\u2019s Barometer<\/span> Templar 2008. She is a Hawthornden Fellow, a tutor for OCA and currently Writer in Residence for RSPB Bempton Cliffs.<\/span>
 <\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KatyaNot of my own choosingdo my paps darken like muzzles.My belly slowly swells.I cannot see my valley now.I crave for lassibut they bring us rusty waterin the bottom of a can.They come and come,day, night, day,unbuttoning as the door slaps against the stucco.They leave our thighs and facescrusty with their stink.And after me,they hump across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}