Santa Lucia
Requiem, ave Santa Lucia.
Requiem for twenty three years on earth.
For what you have in one thousand, I have in only one.
As delicate as your skin.
Your paper hands and paper feet are as
bible pages now; leafed through, poured upon.
How lonely it must be in your glass tomb.
The burning lights, and eyes, and prayers scold you.
Ave ei your gilded mask. Ave ei
your gilded heart. For mine is as ash in
your alter fire. What a fitting vestige
to be incorruptible, twenty three.
Divination
Divining for my soul
where is this still water?
Is it buried deep?
My own Swordy Well
lays patiently impatient.
At the bottom of
the dark pit it sits,
motionless and cold.
Quiet and cavernous.
Aggressively stagnant.
Swarming with little
blood worms. Bending in
ghastly pirouettes.
I feel them inside
Their agonising contortions.
The dyke within groans.
I had built it,
to hide the swelling
waters. Pressure burns and
starts restlessly eroding.
I broke ground today.
Pierced the fleshy turf till
water springs, in full orbs,
up, out of my eyes.
Filtered throught
he silt of time.
It’s time to dry the well.
Emma Jenkins, originally from London, currently lives and writes in a sleepy village nestled in the hills of Kent where she worked alongside fantastic poets during her degree in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Kent. Since graduating, she has been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to live and work in Japan, teaching children English through creative writing, while also learning the art form of the Japanese haiku. Emma will begin a Master's in poetics at the University of London this September.
