You are here

Poem With No Rhyme or Rain

Author: 
Josephine Corcoran

This poem was joint winner in the NPL Insta Poem Competition for National Poetry Day 2022 on the theme of The Environment.

Explore more

RELATED POEMS

Self-Portrait as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Others

by
Jane Yeh

I smooth down my skirt, toss my hair. My buckles rattle with each step

Like little bayonets. They’re called knife pleats for a reason.

 

The blue wool of a Jaeger dress is better than twenty dinners with an idiot.

Bring me the head of Cristóbal Balenciaga! It’s a hoot

 

To sneak cigarettes in some Boston dive, pretend I’m a divorcée.

The curl in a bouffant will always betray you. What’s the point

 

Of living like a cartoon nun when you can pose for the camera

In a shantung sheath? My hair is dark as a drawn-on eyebrow.

 

I lay my fingers on the plate like a fan. I’ve been waiting all my life

To be noticed, crossing and uncrossing my legs. (How the high heel

 

Of summer presses at our throats.) It’s a blast to guzzle 

Martinis with the ‘girls’, pretend I’m thin as a polyester dress.

 

A string of pearls round my neck like an artificial promise:

The harsh taste of gin like an unrequited laugh.

Art
Enjoy this poem

Quilt Poem: Teenage Kicks

by
Jane Yeh

after Gwendolyn Brooks and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

 

we make ourselves dizzy on fumes & fruit cocktails        think of plants

how they are visible to each other            take pics of the best looks for the record

if there are flowers, flowers             the flounce on a hem

 

we try everything on           each body has its pose               a dress that almost resembles a vine

pointy boot or platform shoe           our arena of possibilities: the mall

between some image a blur

 

stretch turtleneck or ruched skirt        the brave stockings          in hell a radio playing our songs

we shrink into school, then expand:          formal chrysanthemum

our hair as big as a neon sign

 

we anticipate a message         (actually talking, on the phone)        secret spill

how our jokes line up in permanent rotation           the made up games

our treasury of gestures               all the sparklings    

 

we have everything but control             like trees, we adhere to silence     

then out the door                  skating at night on empty streets           our looping paths

the rhinestone traces left behind              we who were

 

Art
Identity
Enjoy this poem

I would like to be the last person on Earth

by
Amy Key

Vivienne Westwood, a cento

 

The garment should say: ‘I am this’

A story of itself

It’s just so creative to put a sentence together

Greet me by ‘how lovely you are’ rather than ‘I like your hat’

I haven’t thought properly about dying

But if I were to write anything on my tombstone

It would be ‘The only revolution is culture’

Every time I speak to someone, I assume they understand

How easy it would have been not to lead this life

I could have been a schoolteacher

What you are given for free should not be owned

Love affairs go a long way to helping life pass you by

Behave according to the clothes

Forget yourself and you will become who you are

I am the centre of my look, like Chanel was

Punk was kids having a great time, but for what? I don’t know

If I go into a room and see Pamela Anderson looking incredible

I’m going to be delighted

The sun makes my skin itch when I’m on a bicycle

A nude is never really naked

I know exactly what I would like my legacy to be

Form is always becoming something else

I design for a world that doesn’t exist, you know, one like this but better

Art
Love & Sex
Identity
Death
Enjoy this poem