Hello poets and readers. Have you listened to the podcast with Melinda Smith yet? Don’t forget we’d love to hear any comments about what resonated with you. Today Poetry in Process is excited to bring you one of the found text poems Melinda referred to in the interview, about Ernie Ecob. Hope you enjoy it!
Ernie Ecob . . . was arguing against providing bathroom facilities in shearing sheds for female shearers because he said women only want to be shearers for the sex. My mind melted at the number of levels on which that was the weird and wrong thing to say. Melinda Smith
Poetry in Process Podcast, 28th February 2019
Ernie Ecob as a Bare-Bellied Yoe
Women only want to be shearers for the sex
– Ernie Ecob, former Secretary, Australian Workers’ Union
She takes me by my hind legs, which are
my only legs Women want for shearers
to be the only sex Looks through me,
intent, a pack face seeing a herd face
Sex be for shearers. To the women,
only want Slides me into position,
grasping her machinery To be women,
only sex the shearers for want the teeth
glint, the dark comb dangling Shearers
want sex only to be for the women I kick
and stumble Sex be for women.
To the shearers, only want – bleating –
glory if she gets me Shearers only want
to be women for the sex If I hold still
she might not draw blood this time
Women want the shearers to only be
for sex I freeze and brace, my sheep eyes
blanking blow by blow she peels me
After, nearly fleeceless, spent, I feel her
bend, take me in gentle headlock, lips
in my white ear Her low growl: ‘Women,
Ernie, women – women only want to be.’
Melinda Smith, 2019
(forthcoming in Listen, bitch, Ampersand Duck & Recent Work Press, Oct 2019)
Poetry in Process 