Forward Prizes 2025 | An extract from Catherine-Esther Cowie’s ‘Heirloom’

Our celebration of the Forward Poetry Prize shortlists continues, with three poems from Catherine-Esther Cowie’s Heirloom (Carcanet) – nominated for the Best First Collection award. Cowie was born in St. Lucia and migrated with her family as a child to Canada and then the USA, where she is currently a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow.

 

Mimorian
        after Carlos Drummond’s Residuo

Only a little of me remains, a fixture,
Madwoman locked in a downstairs room,
four-walled gag, muffler. Of my ravings,
the upstairs hear nothing, nothing.
But still a little of me will stay, the stink of me
in the sheets, on the walls, on their tongues,
wagging, wagging all night long about
my bad romances—chupid woman,
sad woman
        object lesson.
 
Of my illness, they talk too much,
I am spectacle, spectre, fire-lover
wandering off into the bush, the market square.
My early morning peep shows, the breaking
day, someone forgot to lock my room, again,
the music loud in my head, how I shook,
shook the neighbourhood awake with my naked breasts,
my grandchildren cried, their friends can’t come over.
And of those things I remember
so little
        so little
why can’t they do the same?
 
Of the things I enjoy,
they won’t remember, the mourning doves
nesting in the monstrous breadfruit tree,
rum thrown back, going deep
down, deep down between my legs,
my hair brushed and slick and smoothed
into a bun, my yellow satin ribbon.
 
Of God, am I against, for                       
or indifferent, they’ve never asked
or cared to know. My mother,
father, their names…                             
already they’ve forgotten.
Of my love of white, they’ll remember
cotton dresses bleached in a blinding sun,
my men, always, always fair.
 
Of me so little will remain, stripped
and pared down to a fear,
bright and blossoming in the back
of a young girl’s head: ou fou  ou fou
ou fou
                ou fou.

The Outside Child    

I will not disappear, dead myself
in a bush somewhere.
The freak lives, sucks air. 
I have a face that is not so unlike hers. 
Perhaps that’s what troubles,
I am the final blow. The betrayal, 
so close, under her roof, in her bed. 
The man she so loved, loved me,
raised me in her house, unnatural thing that I am, 
a sin, offspring of a predator and a prey,
that grows and grows, has a mammalian face, 
hands, feet, a voice like the blackbird’s, 
high-pitched and singing. 

In my wildest dreams, I hug her 
children, my cousins.
They are my brothers and sisters.
How they insult, mother-killer,
daughter of a sketel.
I blossom bright, draw nearer still, 
allow their biting, bites. The sharp of their teeth,
the only intimacy:
my flesh an epiphany. 
        I am, love me. 

Haunting  

We frighten the children.

My hair ragged in red cloth, 
I speak a language they don’t understand,

their ears tuned to English, tuned
to American cartoons.

And Leda, Gwanmanman Leda runs 
cracks up the walls, 
through the centre of our dinner plates.

It’s their own fault, you know,
they won’t stay in their rooms. 

How she endures, endures,
Gwanmanman Leda. Leda.

Even after I married, 
after she died, she endures.
Tanbou mwen.
Jab mwen.

But the children, 
the children.
They stare.
Regard me strangely, sadly.
There will be no walk to the park today.
No jump rope high. 
Only their rooms.
They will stay in their rooms. 

Alé, alé. I chase.
They hide behind a wall. Spy. 

I must clean my house like I cleaned Leda’s room.

Scrubbing. A form of memory. 
A song. Trojan horse for my own blues.

Keeper of the madness.
The mad. Leda.
Mwen faché.
I was only a child, 
only a child 
made for play,
not the washing of soiled sheets,
of shit-stained walls,
of an old woman.

But the children, 
how they stare.
Their blink-less eyes. 
Pouty lips.
Why won’t they go into their rooms?
Leave me to Leda. 

We are a pair.
She, because of her bad head. 
Mal tèt. And I, 
because I was a child. 
Small. Piti.
Crushable. 
Like a roach.

The mad and the little,
The mad and the little,
Give them a tickle,
Then a prickle.

Leda, stop your singing.

And I must stop this fool parade.
This arm muscling towards memory—

You’ve made it up, 
Isn’t that what they said?
Mal tèt, bad head. 

No one ever hit you. Mantè.
Isn’t that what they said?

But Leda, Leda, 
my sweet Leda.
Mad monument.
Rogue memory.

But we must think of the children.
They cry for us, Mommy, Mommy.
 

Extracted from Heirloom by Catherine-Esther Cowie, published by Carcanet Press. See all the books on the Forward Prize shortlists here.