Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Third Prize Winner - Marilyn Jenkins

Marilyn Jenkins is a poet and fiction writer who lives in Llantwit Fardre. She was born in Aberdare and educated at Aberdare Girls’ Grammar, Aberystwyth, London and Cardiff Universities. She has worked as a teacher and lecturer and as English Officer in The National Language Unit of Wales where in 1981 she produced a retelling of The Four Branches of the Mabinogi for schools. She returned to Wales in 2000 after periods in England and abroad including Canada and Australia. Her work has been published in magazines such as The Anglo Welsh Review, The New Welsh Review, Paris Atlantic, Envoi and prize-winners’ anthologies. Her first poetry collection was published by Cinnamon Press in April 2007 with the support of the Welsh Books Council. Her first novel, The Legacy of Alice Waters, was published in 2009 by YWO/Legend Press (supported by The Arts Council). Marilyn is a Member of Academi.

Taking Delivery

Inside green trays stacked in the porch like
hollow play-bricks are plastic bags chucked
together, tied fast at the neck. I unload these
green trays dropped in the glass porch, strip away
plastic, lift eggs in cardboard, biscuits in packs,
sets of tins bound together, in fours, with plastic
hard as chain-mail; nothing breaks or rolls not even
the veiled potatoes; cheese sweats in its transparent
vest next to bread in labelled cellophane.

Remember my boy born with a caul, how easily
that membrane broke – released fluid, dark,
squashed features, frizzled hair, accessible, mine.
Already chill surrounds him; a nurse wraps him tight
in wool, my little squint-eyed porker. I want to eat him,
take him back, hold fast in body warmth. Here, beneath
my hands, vine tomatoes spread on ersatz grass,
ready, fresh to eat; close by, frozen packs already start
to melt; clear water dribbles, spills, prepares to run.