Helen Quah

Helen Quah



Suburbia

Women are auditioning
to be themselves.
They practice reciting
their lines with terrible conviction
in back bedrooms
inside fitted wardrobes.

*

Women are on the tv mute
dry coughing into their hands.
Sat in plazas stale as Bundt cake.
Women find other women’s
voices garish and loud.
The laughter perverse.
Instead of talking today
to a loved one, they prefer
to watch white noise.
Silent horses with arthritic pain.

*

Women are sailing large boats
too big to jump off.
The waves fall logically.
Before the sun develops
on film they all will have been
caught, shelled, and sorted
by their respective hair types.

*

Dragging handbags up the street
scuffing silk bottoms on the ground.
Sometimes followed by their dogs.
Sometimes followed by their husbands.
Wearing their beliefs like a waistcoat
tight around the midriff.

*

Women are counting cigarettes.
One for each man running
the perimeter gently rumbling
in their jeeps.
The open road is salvageable
they say to the fifth
before lighting its soggy end.

*

Women in the discotheque.
Women on the autobahn.
It’s believed the inside of a woman’s thigh
is longer than a piece of Sellotape.
The grip of a woman’s hand
can hold a child’s, a man’s,
a woman’s and crush them all.

Women can make the same sound
as a wolf and do.





HELEN QUAH is a British poet of Guyanese and Chinese-Malaysian descent. Her first pamphlet Dog Woman was published by Outspoken Press in June 2022. She is currently working as a junior doctor in London.