New verse by Eastbourne writer Maggie Rainey-Smith.

 

Jogging

 

she is young white and affiliated to

a famous writing school an MA no less

I’m assuming she must run at the very least

so I can’t take offence when she

tells me to jog on because

I already know I’m invisible typing

my life into the baby boomer abyss

privileged by association, a post-war

baby whose trajectory is history

that my grandfather was an Irish orphan

migrant here, my father a prisoner of war

my mother a child of the depression

Catholic minority left school aged 12

that I’m the first on both sides to

study tertiary, even if I had to wait

until I was 50 to do that… still

it seems, my voice is now irrelevant

the story done and dusted years ago

and imagine if I said to the #metoo

crowd, my first sex was technically

rape but consenting all the same

because I come from a generation

prepared to take half the blame

and I was grateful as a Catholic

to lose my virginity while saying no

because I really wanted it but

was too afraid to say yes

I can imagine the backlash

And I see on Facebook they’re

promoting a gathering

to talk about personal

poetry and how much

information is too much

and I’m guessing already

I’m another statistic

I’ve started jogging

 

Maggie Rainey-Smith, 2018