Carole Coates

Mirror Woman

If you eat butter
you know what will happen.

The glass bulges and thickens.
The mirror woman comes.

She is your unspeakable relative.
How long will she stay?

She is the bag lady
who knows your secret
and shouts it in the street.

She is more than pear-shaped –
a full sack swelling downwards...

She is thick as earth,
sullen as water.

She is the slag heap
that shifts on the mountain

and will find its level
in a curve of gravity,
a flesh waterfall.

She is the mud surge
which will bury you.
You know what to do.

( This poem was published in Other Poetry Series 11 no.30 2006 and will appear in Looking Good , Shoestring 2009. )

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