‘Girlfriend’ by Jessica Traynor

I never criticised the way
you couldn’t eat Monster Munch
without a crumb-bib dusting
your school jumper

or mentioned the stained knickers
on your bedroom floor, left
as some dirty protest
for your arctic mother.

But how you’d drill me
on my rap sheet; sneezing
too hard and wetly
into open palms

babbling too loudly
in the ladies’ toilets
at the gig we’d snuck into
at fifteen,

all the other missed
social cues;
each air-born lesson
that tangled itself

in the glossy hair
of smarter girls.
Friend, we were birthed
into womanhood together,

but I only think of you now
when the cramp
of menstruation
tugs my guts.

From issue #6: spring/summer 2018

About the Author
Jessica Traynor’s debut collection Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press) was shortlisted for the 2015 Strong/Shine Award. Awards include the Hennessy Award and Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary. A series of poems in response to Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ was published by The Salvage Press in 2017. Her second collection, The Quick, is forthcoming from Dedalus Press in autumn 2018.