Laura Stanley

Spynnester

pynne rollynge betwixt two longe s’s, like the washynge, the cardynge, the webbynge, the
brewynge, the water-fetchynge, the flour-gryndynge, the rush-peelynge, the chicken-
pluckynge, the cow-mylkynge, the butter-churnynge, the child-byrthynge, the bleedynge, the
dyynge betwixt the constant spynnynge, the flax fibres wyndynge around the distaff flowynge
through her belt, until her body is one long spynnynge, thread twystynge dawn to dusk betwixt
thumb and forefynger, yarn spyralynge around the spyndle, thyckenynge, cocoonynge,
blossomynge, like the strands of her daughter’s tresses and her daughter’s daughter’s tresses
and her daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s tresses and her daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s
daughter’s tresses

The Master’s Needle Will Never Unpick The Master’s Dress

Are you a good witch or a bad witch? – Glinda, Good Witch of the North

Who me? Why I’m not a witch at all. – Dorothy Gale

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

You must pick out a white dress or a red dress. If you pick the white dress, you must float
through your window and through the sky, but no one must see you and you must not leave
the house. If you pick the red dress, you must fall to your knees and claw the floorboard until
you leave long, deep marks and marks will be left on you by the dress, so that even if you rip
it off everyone will see your fibre-infused skin. And if you have picked the white dress, if
you spill one drop of blood on it, or someone spills one drop of blood on you, then you are
now wearing the red dress, and you can never again wear the white dress. There is a third
dress. You cannot wear it until you are old and wrinkled enough. This dress is black. Did you
dye it black or did others dye it black? The black dress was the red dress was the white dress.
You have re-cut and re-sewn the material. Now you are shadow, everywhere and unheard.
You can walk anywhere you want. Screech as loud as you want. Why does there have to be
red and white dresses? Black is better. Black is your colour. But the looms, the wool, the
sheep, the grazing fields are not yours. And the men will drown you in whatever colour dress
you pick.

Laura Stanley is a lesbian poet from the West Midlands. Her heresy has been published in bath magg, Magma and streetcake. In 2020, she won the Staunch Short Story Prize. In 2021, she came third in the Young Poet Network’s Pop Culture Poetry Challenge. She has a poem forthcoming in After Sylvia (Nine Arches Press).