Zoë Brigley

Sonnet for the Hole in the Glass

You know the women through every manmade thing 

that men have used to trap them: a van’s double doors 

closing: a keyboard: letters lined up like crows 

on telephone wires: barbs on a fence: a door that opens 

to a queue of men: at night stepping onto a white bus: 

that moment on the edge of what is about to happen. 

In a cell, they choose between sex or jail: the cop car 

where they apologise: Thank you, Sir, thank you for not 

booking me tonight: the papers they sign from hospital 

gurneys: or the shiny, blue cellphone light that hooks 

them onscreen like tiny, pink fish. Punch a hole 

in the glass: cracks spidering: ice too thin to carry 

the weight of men: one eye to the gap just

wide enough for you to read their names.

*

Poem for Emily Doe

The next thing

she remembers, she is on a gurney 

in a hallway. She has dried blood 

and bandages on the backs 

of her hands and elbow. She thinks, 

maybe I have fallen. She is very 

calm. She signs 

the papers. Three nurses 

prise flora and fauna 

from her hair. Pine needles scratch 

the back of her neck. She

shuffles from room to room 

with a blanket wrapped 

around, needles trailing 

behind: she leaves a little pile 

in every room she sits in—

*

Letter from Georgia O’Keeffe

He opened the lens – and I did as I was told – 

sat long and bare for the stretch of a four-minute 

exposure. A stormy night on Lake George – and later 

he wrote – All is right between us for you gave me 

your virginity. You offered the very center. And he hung 

me in pieces on his gallery wall. He is – I suspect 

– always photographing himself. Where I saw 

a tree with a cut limb – in pain but lovely 

and live – he cropped a dying chestnut 

crying with a man’s soul. When I knew the hot 

moon and its reflection – white and mingling 

on the waves – he mapped a line between land 

and sky – and the moon watching 

passive. Every part of me he saw in fragments. Bits 

of universality in a woman’s body. Neck. Torso. 

Breasts. People often say funny things about 

my hands. How admired they have been 

when painting – smeared as they are – but preferable 

to the white, useless hands men know 

so well. He had me boxed – until 

my leaving – when he accused me – for

I went on – no longer a pet or creature – not his 

Georgia O’Keeffe. I walked out naked 

onto the long sigh of the land under 

a darkening sky. As good a place as any – 

I told him – to let your bones bleach. 

*

Western Union

Here’s a story—not mine—of a woman out West, 

not the American West as it is now, but 

a place without time. Long ago, she shed her dress, 

and now she wears a belt and boots, faces the men 

round the campfire. Like Claudia Cardinale or

Katy Jurado in a film I once saw: Nothing 

you can do to me, not a thing, that won’t wash off 

with soap and water. One man watches, and does 

nothing. Another one behind her, encircling 

with one arm: the other hand stabs, slices her open 

from sternum to navel. She gasps at the wound:

not guts, but wire, pistons, circuits. Did you see 

it too? The moment that told us what violation 

meant: forced to look, to see nothing like flesh. 

9 Alfred Stieglitz: Georgia O’Keeffe, Hands and Horse Skull

11 Blind Horse Elegy

13 Poem for Emily Doe

14 Undressing Poem

15 Letter from Georgia O’Keeffe

16 Poem on the Edge

17 Letter from a Sheep Skull

18 Dryad

19 Dressing Poem

20 Sonnet for the Hole in the Glass

21 Letter from Tess Durbeyfield

22 Forgetting Poem

25 Victoria Brookland: Horse

27 Letter to a Horse’s Head

28 Poem with a Least Favourite Dress

29 Revolver

30 Western Union

31 Poem with a Whalebone Crinoline

32 The Eye in the Wall

33 The Shave

34 Hand & Breast

35 Post Colonial

36 Beatitudes for the Women

38 Poem with Seams

39 Victoria Brookland: Vésuviennes

40 Letter to Leda on Getting Married

41 Poem with a Wedding Dress

42 Swan

43 Rare

44 Syringe

45 Round Trip

46 White Patio with a Red Door

47 Vésuviennes

48 Poem with a High Waist

49 The Amish Roofers

50 Poem with Stockings and Suspenders

51 Victoria Brookland: I too am a rare pattern

53 Letter from Edna Pontellier

54 Star / Sun / Snow

56 Eagle Poem

57 Name Poem

58 Poem with a Mourning Dress

59 Letter from Nemi

61 Beatitude for the Meek

62 He Has a John Clare Chin

63 Tree with Cut Limb

64 My Last Beatitude

65 Hand & Skull

69 Notes

70 Acknowledgements

71 Thanks

From the reviews of Conquest:

'With Conquest, her fascinating second collection, the Welsh-born poet Zoë Brigley explores women's desires, dream and loves… Brigley deepens her expressive range as she explores diverse worlds and a shifting female cast... Via historical and mythic approaches, she highlights the vastness and intensity of women's desire, as well as the delicacy... The formal variety of Conquest serves Zoë Brigley's imaginative quest well, and includes, for instance, the prose poem, the list poem, and a variation on the double sestina. Yet the collection is without ostentation, and poems such as "The Love of a Husband" ("Because he never, ever hesitated./ Because when she shuts a window, he opens a door.") and the intricate "The Blue Rose", in memory of her English grandfather, are as heartfelt as they are beautifully judged.' – Moniza Alvi, PBS Bulletin

‘Exploring sexuality and politics with imaginative subtlety, Conquest is a book about pursuit and capture and the things that  elude us in the chase… What seems to interest Brigley most about pursuit is what is evaded in the chase. Her poems are full of references to the lost and the untouchable… This is a beautifully disconcerting collection, intelligent in its treatment of its themes.’ – Helen Mort, Magma

‘Conquest is a fascinating study of women’s sexuality’ – Pascale Petit.