Funny Girl

On the brink of my teens at the Dominion
I watch with my mother through the black.
Omar and Barbra glow against
our faces, sing You Are Woman
I Am Man in that heart-red boudoir
on a sixty-foot screen. Omar’s dinner-jacket,
clipped moustache, brown eyes bigger
than my head, Barbra’s piled-up hair, blue
diamanté matching her fan, sway me
with their duet. I’m slinking inside their
embrace. She surrenders the swan
of her neck, shuts her lilac-shadow eyes.

Omar gathers her in his arms, croons
Does it take more explanation than this?
My mother knows who’s woman who’s
man, though she’s still trying to be
father and mother, fill the shape of his
gap. Is this how men serenade women
who find it so absurd it makes them laugh?
I want to unbuckle their clothes,
(bow-tie at the throat, blue diamanté)
unfold whoever’s softer to the touch:
his hand or hers, my finger to lips,
sense (when it’s night) his mouth on mine.

It’s a feeling I like feeling very much.
When no-one’s watching I risk being
woman and man, wriggle between their
voices, blur before their smoky gaze,
my skin a swan’s feather
prickling at the wing. I burst into
flames with this feeling, all the time
sitting silent in my singed and secret dark.

Winner of The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2023

Robert Hamberger’s poetry has been shortlisted and highly commended for Forward Prizes. He has a Hawthornden Fellowship. His fourth collection, Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo Press, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2020 Polari Prize. His memoir with poems, A Length of Road: finding myself in the footsteps of John Clare, was published by John Murray in 2021.