Elisabeth Sennitt Clough
Biography
Elisabeth Sennitt Clough lives in and is inspired by the Fens. She is the author of Glass, winner of Paper Swans' inaugural competition and Best Pamphlet at the Saboteur Awards. Her debut collection Sightings won the Michael Schmidt Prize for Best Portfolio. A poem from Sightings was highly commended in the Forward Prize. Her second collection At or Below Sea Level is a PBS Recommendation. A poem from her forthcoming collection The Cold Store was longlisted for the 2019 National Poetry Competition. Elisabeth is founding editor of the Fenland Poetry Journal.
The Poem
Femme Fatale
No one’s certain who the bad guy is –
the detective or the gangster.
But, darling, I’m never the Gwyneth Paltrow.
Perfumed and desirable, I wait
in smoke-filled piano bars
for men to call me
their addiction.
I catch my own gaze in a mirror,
whisper things like, you’re all that matters
and be dangerous, darling.
Each metallic fingernail is a pistol
on your back.
Even my brows smoulder.
And I have torn both hands
from my biological clock.
If you dared ask me, would I?
I’d describe to you a small windowless chamber,
where – inside – sits a black phone
on its little wooden table.
How it cries and cries to the empty room –
jumpy and rigid with its own need.