Brides in the Bath

BRIDES IN THE BATH

I’d just always wanted to bathe in a tub with claws
And golden taps, smelling of lavender like a real lady.
He’d ushered me in and said, ‘Darling, it’s all yours.’

My father taught me history, about politics and wars,
King Henry and his poor wives, but it slipped my mind.
I’d just always wanted to bathe in a tub with claws.

‘May I join you?’ he said, in a voice he’d used before.
I wriggled to make room, but was secretly annoyed;
he’d ushered me in and said, ‘Darling, it’s all yours.’

He soaped my back too firmly, like I was one of his chores,
Then gradually pushed my head down towards the plug.
I’d just always wanted to bathe in a tub with claws.

You are unique, he told me, you haven’t any flaws.
At the shop I’d always enjoyed being his best antique.
He’d ushered me in and said, ‘Darling, it’s all yours.’

Cleverer girls than me have let down their guard
For men who only deal with priceless things.
I’d just always wanted to bathe in a tub with claws.
He’d ushered me in and said, ‘Darling, it’s all yours.’

Amy Brown

I greatly enjoyed Brown’s first poetry volume The Propaganda Poster Girl. Most first collections concentrate upon the interior mind. But Brown’s striking characteristic is the outside objective world as the source for the images. The volume is divided into three. The first is personal, childhood, family, the beach, life in general.

The second section is about living in Viet Nam and South-East Asia. It contains the title poem, a man purchasing a copy of a famous poster, a girl holding a gun and a flower. There are many poems about the ‘look’, the ‘gaze’, the ‘view’. Brown’s is steady and unflinching. This sense is at its strongest in the third section, which begins with Brides in the Bath; a section living up to the back-page blurb as ‘thoughtful, mature and provocative.’

My use of this poem may surprise in that the subject is so distasteful. But it taps into traditional fairy tales, many of which are much more grotesque and brutal than the sanitised versions they have become. The jaunty tone adds a chilling twist to the macabre subject. Subtlety is apparently not there, but it is. An artfully simple poem it mixes sweet innocence with horror, a collision of moods akin to a Hitchcock movie.

Brides in the bath is the name given to the case of a 19th century British bigamist who drowned three ‘wives’. The incident entered the mythology based around the Bluebeard theme, which in turn arises from an even larger theme - women as victim; unfortunately still far too large a part of our culture not just in legend but in reality. This morning’s paper has an item stating that over half the murders in New Zealand result from domestic violence.