at the boss’s leaving do
no forgetting his tongue
his big-boss-do-as-I-please tongue
in my mouth, after speeches and thank yous
for all his good work, and I taste his power
long after he withdrew grinning,
yes grinning, calculating eyes
ice cold blue and fixing me
with shut it, shut it
and that moment
that brief moment
repeating when I
wish to break
the seal on my lips
that seal of a woman,
untold, for forty-one years,
until cancer
replaces his tongue in my mouth
Olive M. Ritch, an Aberdeen-based poet from Orkney, is a recipient of the Scottish Book Trust Next Chapter Award and the Calder Prize for Poetry from the University of Aberdeen. She has also received commendations in the National Poetry Competition and the Hippocrates Prize, as well as being shortlisted in the Bridport Poetry Prize. Her poems have been published in Agenda, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Guardian, Gutter, New Writing Scotland, The British Journal of Psychiatry, The Poetry Cure (Bloodaxe), Don’t Bring Me No Rocking Chair (Bloodaxe), A Personal History of Home (Oxford Torch website), and the Scottish Poetry Library. Her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4.