Guest Poem by Jemma L. King

Jemma L King is the winner of the Terry Hetherington Young Welsh Writer of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Wales Book of the Year Prize for her debut publication, ‘The Shape of a Forest’ (Parthian). Her following book, ‘The Undressed’ (Parthian) sold out on the first day of publication. She has read and published her work internationally and her work has been translated into 13 languages.

3 Month Scan

A bell curve of grey static against black.
What new worlds, old suns burn here?

This space, hushed, aseptic. We are sideliners
on the brink of history before her instrument

as it ploughs the stars,
sends galaxies and all of creation tumbling from view.

Flotsam and jetsam wax and wane
are swallowed again by oil slicks,
voids of blood, dark matter.

Unknown forces, such geographies.

A length now, a structure, bone?
Two rounded eye sockets, Martian fingerprints and

the perfection of skin padding an illuminated spine.
Your heart-beat as giddy as a moth.

This, your private universe,
this salted black sea in which you swim
dormant and unseen.

Are you aware of me? My own distant planet

sending signals, signals of life
through the screen, unwitting,
unwoken.

‘It’s a boy’ she says,

and I see light glowing on the horizon.