Eyewear is very glad to feature a poem today by Jessica Mayhew. She is a 22-year-old
student with a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Creative Writing. She will be studying for a Masters in English Literature at UCL this autumn. Her
poetry and fiction has been published in magazines such as Staple, Coffee
House, Cadaverine, Seventh Quarry, Party in Your Eyesocket, Cooldog and Hearing
Voices. She has given readings, including at the Southwell and Ledbury poetry
festivals. Her first pamphlet was published in 2012 by Crystal Clear Creators,
and is titled Someone Else’s Photograph. It is available from the Crystal
Clear Creators website.
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| Jessica Mayhew, Young British Poet |
My Grandmother’s Grandfather
I watched her dream back to
Lerwick,
her chair hollowed to fit her,
printing withered lips on water
glasses
the shade of the sand on Muckle
Roe.
She dammed the North Sea there
with wet, gritted handfuls
and mouse-earred chickweed
shuddered white,
sky dark as an under-wing.
Down on the aer,
above the rush and kurr of the waves,
fish bellies bloomed under thin
blades.
She told me everything she knew
about salt,
how it split her mother’s
fingers,
waiting for her father to
surface.
Land-locked, we watch at the
window,
for the crooked flecks of gulls
fussing over scraps on deck
like bright drops shaken from an
oar.
Through washing lines, roof tiles
his sea-voice floats, stiff with
spindrift,
I’m
still here, come find me.
poem by Jessica Mayhew; published online with her permission.
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