Emma Lee’s publications include The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020) and Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She has joined panels and written papers on artistic responses to the refugee crisis arising from her co-editing of Over Land, Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves, 2015) and curation of Journeys in Translation. She reviews for magazines, twice winning Saboteur Award for Best Reviewer, and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com. Currently she is President of Leicester Writers’ Club. Her poems and short stories have been widely published.

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Emma introduces her poems:

Some time ago, with a certain amount of trepidation, I submitted a poem to Arachne Press’s What Meets the Eye, the Deaf Perspective – would I be considered deaf enough? Close to the deadline, I reasoned that it wasn’t my decision,  that it lay with the editors, but I would regret it if I found out afterwards that I could have been accepted, so, in the end, I submitted. The year the anthology was released, deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis took part in the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. I then wrote a sequence of poems following her journey and eventual win, two of those poems follow.

Sadly, domestic violence, another topic I write a lot about, never seems to go away. ‘Even Small Flames can be Fierce’ was inspired by the vigil for Sarah Everard, killed by a serving police officer. ‘The Women’s Quilt’ was a project developed from the Femicide Census (2009 – 2015) with a square representing each woman. In 2018 I was able to see the quilt in Nottinghamshire and it inspired ‘The Quilt with 598 Squares’. Finally, ‘Invisible Cuts are the Deepest’. looks at coercive control.

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Six Poems by Emma Lee

TRACKING SOUNDS, CROSSING BORDERS

I watch the stylus track the groove in the record
and the flicker on the amplifier as Ella sings.
My mother and grandmother talk as if I’m not
in the room. Yesterday in class, the teacher
watched me. Her mouth was closed. I’d finished
the work on the board, was doing nothing wrong.
I felt Claire’s elbow and turned. Her mouth said
she’d called my name. My mother’s all elbows
and angles, her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
I watched the trees wave green leaves. It wasn’t
until after my operation I discovered that brown
leaves rustle when the breeze makes them dance.

Who knew snow crunched? I could hear the rhythms
of someone’s speech, but not the tone. I watched
expressions and body language to compensate.
When I read my poems to an audience I look for
a smile of recognition, the stillness of true listening,
a fidget of boredom, a clue into how I’m heard.
Discussing students reading aloud with my teenager,
she mentioned she imagines me reading them.
Looked puzzled when I said I only hear a monotone.

In the cafe bar, I sit at the spare table. I need several
moments to filter the background chatter, the clatter,
the coffee machine and I know music is playing.
But plastic chairs, aluminium tables, hard floor and walls,
mean the sounds echo along with the tinnitus in my ears.
When I buy a coffee, I lip read. I tick
‘prefer not to say’ on forms. I can pass, get by.
I feel the dig of Claire’s elbow, the teacher watching,
my mother saying failure and I still haven’t worked out
where the border between hard of hearing and deaf lies.

(Originally published in What Meets the Eye, The Deaf Perspective (Arachne Press, 2021)

A WALTZ OF EMOTIONS

A body reacts before the brain understands.
He’s late. She’s on her feet, her signs rapid,
emphatic. He’s an easy grin and disregards
her: not his first offence. In a firm, fluid
move she grabs his shoulder. His stance
softens, fist circles his chest: sorry.
She turns. Should she give him a chance?
Her champagne dress lies flat.
…………………………………………The employ
of stimulus on the cochlear nerve dupes
the brain to react as if it has heard. He rests
his hands on her shoulders. She touches
them, forming a cross over her chest,
the sign for love. He hopes to appeal
to her. She slips below his arm so he reaches.
A poem’s sound creates an emotional
response, a faster pulse, as the brain figures
the narrative. Her dress brushes his crumpled suit.
Should she fall or rise, follow head or heart?

THE MELT OF A FOXTROT

He gives her his hand to signal start.
She has to tame freezing waves to a smooth
rink’s surface with the confidence
of the engineers who believed the ship unsinkable,
and the grit of musicians who kept playing.
In position, she can’t see her partner’s movements,
trusts his lead, remembers his instruction
to not look a mess in her pearled white gown.
Diamante undulates as she melts
the ice-hearted judge who signals excitement
and says amazing. Her clutched fingers
loosen revealing a heart the colour of sunlit sea.

(Originally published in Wildfire Words magazine)

EVEN SMALL FLAMES CAN BE FIERCE

Lighting a candle felt feeble in a week
when wind wolf-whistled through eaves,
stalked around drainpipes, battered
against windows and left a familiar fear.
A woman’s remains were found.
A serving police officer arrested.

The flame gutters, leaves a shadow
at its base, unsure of its foundations.
Police warned a vigil would be against
the law. The court found otherwise.
The Duchess of Cambridge left
a bouquet. As other women
followed, the sun’s glow dimmed.

The later image all over the media:
the flare of Patsy Stevenson restrained.
The Met responded that enforcement
was needed because of women’s actions:
the ‘look what you made me do’ excuse.
It brings to mind Wilde’s quote “Each man
kills the thing he loves.” The thing he loves.

On Clapham Common bandstand, flowers,
yellow from the Duchess’s daffodils, orange
dahlias from women offering condolence, red
roses from Sarah Everard’s friends, form a blaze.

(Originally published in Wildfire Words magazine)

THE QUILT WITH 598 SQUARES

Mayurathy Perinpamoorihy, Amandeep Kaur Hothi, Helen Skudder, Anita Harris,
Agnieszka Dziegielewska, Sandra Boakes, Penny Ann Taylor, Raheela Imran,

Sylvia Rowley-Bailey is stitched in pink beads
on Laura Ashley-style fabric. She was sitting
at her computer when found with twenty-three
knife wounds, deemed only worth five years
because she “nagged” her partner and murderer.

Laura Wilson, Kerry Smith, Claire Parrish, Hollie Gazzard, Gail Lucas,
Camille Mathurasingh, Natasha Trevis, Carol French, Rachael Slack, Victoria Rose

A gold crescent moon and stars adorn a navy patch
for a teacher and author, Julie Ann Semper.
Her boyfriend was “too anxious” to attend court.
The judge warned he’d enter
a guilty plea and try him in his absence.

Kayleigh Palmer, Yvonne Davies, Mariam Mohdaqi, Kate McHugh, Karren Martin,
Paula Newman, Annie Beaver, Desirie Thomas, Eystna Blunnie, Sally Harrison

“This was an isolated incident,” say the police.
Neighbours and colleagues say
he “was hard-working, loving dedicated”
and he “should not be remembered
for his actions on that day.”

Nazia Aktar, Taylor Burrows, Sally Cox…
What were their stories?
Cerys Yemm, Farkhanda Younis, Svetlana Zolotovska.
Who speaks for those whose voices were murdered?

(Orignally published in Atrium Poetry and in The Significance of a Dress)

INVISIBLE CUTS ARE THE DEEPEST

It was small things, a sarcastic comment,
a purse lighter in the morning than when she’d
brought it home, a message not passed on.
Friends brushed them off: it’s trivial,
why are you making a fuss, it’s nothing.
A bin that was emptied that morning
was full of empty bottles when she came home.
Give him a chance. It’s a phase, he’ll change.

She only left the house to work, to buy food.
When she came back, she had no idea
whether he’d be home or, if out, when he’d
be back. Knowing she had to be up early,
he woke her at midnight, complaining she
wasn’t awake to eat the meal he’d cooked.
One morning she sat on a bench within sight
of her workplace. Bone tired didn’t cover it.

She wanted to take out her make-up,
create a bruise for every comment,
a scratch for every time she was kept
awake, a fracture for each of his drinks,
a break for each time she was blocked
from leaving. She would be fascinating
shades of purple and blue, not one bone
intact. She wondered what they’d say then.

(3rd prize winner Welshpool Poetry Competition, unpublished)

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