{"id":711,"date":"2010-06-14T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-14T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=711"},"modified":"2012-03-31T13:09:34","modified_gmt":"2012-03-31T13:09:34","slug":"katrina-naomi-is-praying-to-st-wilgerfortis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/katrina-naomi-is-praying-to-st-wilgerfortis\/","title":{"rendered":"Katrina Naomi is praying to St Wilgerfortis"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Plea to Saint Wilgefortis<\/span>

As you know, the hair on my face is dark,<\/span>
it downs my cheek, forests my upper lip, <\/span>
my jaw. As you must surely know, I tried creams, <\/span>

they fetched a rash and the hair sprang back.<\/span>
I\u2019ve never considered myself a freak, just <\/span>
hairier than most, some say even more hirsute<\/span>

than you. My mother saw I\u2019d never marry, <\/span>
father bought me a razor – a cut throat – <\/span>
and as you know, and will surely sympathise, <\/span>

I ran away to a caravan, the red and white stripes <\/span>
of the circus. I make a decent sort of living. <\/span>
But can I trust you with a secret?<\/span>

You may not know that my hair\u2019s beginning <\/span>
to thin, that I mascara the bristles to keep up <\/span>
appearances of a beard, stroke an eye pencil over <\/span>

my chin. Daily, I drench what remains of my moustache <\/span>
in a gentlemen\u2019s tonic, massage well. Help me.<\/span>
I pray to you Wilgefortis, I kiss your silver shoe.<\/span>



\n
*Katrina Naomi<\/a><\/span>‘s latest pamphlet is ‘Charlotte Bronte’s Corset’ (Bronte Society 2010). Her first full collection \u2018The Girl with the Cactus Handshake\u2019, for which she received an Arts Council England writer\u2019s award, was published in 2009 (Templar Poetry).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Plea to Saint WilgefortisAs you know, the hair on my face is dark,it downs my cheek, forests my upper lip, my jaw. As you must surely know, I tried creams, they fetched a rash and the hair sprang back.I\u2019ve never considered myself a freak, just hairier than most, some say even more hirsutethan you. […]<\/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-711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711","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=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1911,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions\/1911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}