*a poem by Sharon Owens, and why don’t they think women need pockets, they being the overwhelmingly male designers and tailors and taste-makers of the world in the last century or so? Because women want more than anything to be slim, to have flat, skinny silhouettes – NOT. Give me liberty, and pockets. I have stuff, and carrying around a purse all the damned time – what a huge bore. Although, I confess, I used to collect them. More about Ms. Owens after the poem’s end.
Someone clever once said
Women were not allowed pockets
In case they carried leaflets
To spread sedition
Which means unrest
To you & me
A grandiose word
For common sense
Fairness
Kindness
Equality
So ladies, start sewing
Dangerous coats
Made of pockets & sedition
*Sharon Owens is a poet and novelist who was born in Omagh, Northern Ireland in 1968. She moved to Belfast in 1988, to study illustration. She married her husband Dermot in 1992 and they have one daughter, Alice. Her previous novels, The Teahouse on Mulberry Street and The Ballroom on Magnolia Street, were published by Penguin.