Fallen Woman

My poem, 'Fallen Woman', won the Chipping Sodbury Festival Poetry Competition last night.  


It's about Sarah Ann Henley, who jumped from the Clifton Suspension Bridge on 8^th May 1885, only for her dress and petticoats to fill with air, parachuting her onto the muddy river bank below.  She died 63 years later, a reluctant celebrity.


This is my poem having a little lap of honour before it sinks back into the mud of obscurity.

Fallen Woman

Mud sticks,

sister of Icarus,

under the nails of pointing fingers,

to the skin of idle tongues.

You can scrub your treacherous dress,

those voluminous petties.

The prurient breeze still lifts the hem

and sniffs beneath.

You tumbled before you stepped

from Clifton’s glittering parapet, the city

spread between your legs

like a dowry to the wind,

which wrapped itself around your body

and possessed you,

as you somersaulted

like a clanging knell,

and plumped

the lecherous lover’s bed

that dipped to catch you

as you fell.

Deborah Harvey © 2009 , 2011

NB. My first poetry collection, Communion, is being published by Indigo Dreams next month. This poem isn't in it.