Dark Side Port Side - September 17, 2018
This poem was a commissioned piece for a a digital poetry trail around Portsmouth, UK called 'Dark Side Port Side'. The project sought to explore the dark history that was rarely told of famous areas around Portsmouth Harbour.
This was presented at the site that ‘Prostitute Parades’ used to appear at The Hard with women displaying their ‘Clean Certificates’ in response to the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864. Sex workers were forced to submit to medical examination and were presented with a ‘clean bill of health’ certificate if they passed the test. If they refused to be examined or were found to have a disease, they would be confined to a ‘Lock Hospital’ for an undetermined amount of time. Although these hospitals appeared in various port cities in the UK, Portsmouth’s was the first. Critics of this scheme pointed to the hypocrisy of sailors (and other men) avoiding examination while women had no choice but to submit.
Coincidentally, on the same road, the Chubb lock was invented as a response to the need for greater security on the prison hulks docked in Portsea.
Deadlock
Your eyes are storm clouds and rocks; sharp edges soaked with salt
Steel hardened from waves and now ashore
New waves beguile
White waves, arms wave
And paper…
Stainless, clear; a siren call
Plump arms ply vice: do it right.
Warped, rolling, rising bile -
The sea is no security
But now, ashore, landlocked and loose
Your kind seek company
Curves: leaning, reclining
Parading and inviting:
Safe, clean company.
Inside captive
Anchored by sin
Tarnished by life
Empty bone fingers knotted behind peeling doors
Masters scheme, loudly declare:
‘This is insanitary’*
Black with censure and a childhood of hunger
How could I scratch out the stain of my name?
Peeling and rusting,
Brine licked and hollowed
Your rough use has me chained and discarded
Months and years may hold me tighter than your hands
For the want of a clean sheet and a key to turn home.
*’Insanitary’ is the wording used on the original documents rather than today’s ‘unsanitary’.
