His Daughters
It wasn’t the life you’d imagine.
Most nights he’d be out,
on the sherry early doors.
Closing time, he’d come back and start.
Exploding over nothing,
he’d throw his tea at the wall,
smash the place up,
scatter elves like skittles.
He slept where he fell
and pissed himself.
We kept our heads down
and got on with the jobs.
There was nothing merry
about any of us.
Not dainty. Not delicate.
We were big girls,
built for the donkey work,
lugging boxes and sacks of toys
from the workshop by day,
nights in the loading bay.
More of a father to strangers,
he’d turn on us and say:
Who’d want you lot any way?
Ugly buggers.
Wild hair flying, clumsy,
we weren’t born for shining
or finery, couldn’t be trusted
with delicate mechanisms
or finishing touches,
but we knew hard labour
and every one of us could lift
a toddler’s weight in trains.
At the end of the day
there’s only so much you can take.
I’ll never forget his face that last time
he staggered in, Jack Frost in tow,
covered in snow, an abominable man,
brandishing a hammer.
I’ll give you bloody Christmas…
By then we’d all come of age –
girls that could turn
skipping ropes into snakes
with a flick of a wrist, each tail
a fist shaking a baby’s rattle.
A rage so great it woke an army
of sleeping dolls. Angel-faced,
they climbed down from the shelves –
all the beautiful daughters
he’d ever wished for,
marching towards him in their clumpy shoes.
Joanne Key won 2nd prize in the 2014 National Poetry Competition, and first prize in the 2018 Hippocrates Open Prize. She was the winner of the 2018 Mslexia Short Story Competition.