Jemma L. King: A Poem

THE END

And then the world turned didn’t it.

With every second that swam past, an invisible

river that grew, unmistakably,

to a sea, an ocean

with every second

her cells grew smaller, shrank their protean mass

until one day, as she combed her hair and saw

with every second that her skin looked thinner

and then there were children.

And then the children had children.

And one day the bells rang and she was at last framed,

contained, a masterpiece

of once-charged limbs, unclocked and sinking

inwards. Ashes to ashes

dust to dust.

And then the world turned didn’t it.

Songs were still bellowed in the ale-houses, but they changed

as children threw off their playclothes,

played little emperors and baby-makers on

streets where ancestral atoms once

danced and fought and fucked.

And then somebody held the four corners of the globe,

pulled them taut

so that everybody slid,

tumbled shrieking into

a big, bloody mess in the middle

tangling horribly

on barbed wire and deformed

by a fast repetition of taps, each

hole punching family trees back to the great sift

of the earth’s fabric.

It’s a long way, to Tipperary,

it’s a long way to go.

It’s a long way, to Tipperary,

to the sweetest girl I know.

And for the most part they were forgotten,

un-existed, their collective millenia

mulched and pulped, flattened

for their children’s feet. Their children’s children’s feet.

And the world burst into colour,

grew capillaries and screens,

making everyone special, those billion
loveless pouty stares.

And then the world turned didn’t it.

Goodbye Piccadilly, 

farewell Leicester Square, 

it’s a long way to Tipperary, 

but my heart’s still there.

--from The Undressed, Jemma L. King. By permission of the author.
 

Jemma L. King is a poet and critic from the UK. Her debut collection, The Shape of the Forest, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Wales Book of the Year Prize and the Roland Mathias. In 2011, she won the Terry Hetherington Young Welsh Writer of the Year Award. Her second collection, The Undressed, is due to be released at the end of June 2014. https://twitter.com/JemmaKingPoet  Read my conversation with Jemma here.