Jennie E Owen

Noah’s Wife

whose name once meant beautiful
but is now

keeper of rats

for they out number any other beast aboard;
the clawed, the furred, the scaled, all cower
all bow

to the filth squeaks as they spill liquid
shadows in corners, flow over
sleeping bodies. It is the way now

animals disappear into animals, into animals
I throw what is left overboard, let their names
drift away
drift away

they float out of view among
the lilies of drowned songbirds, stars
reflected from an impossible blank sky.

The sea rots.

Other feathered creatures, try to shelter
they peck angrily at my ankles
as I slip in rainwater,

the rats move among them
taking the weak, the fledglings squawking
into the dark

the guts. They are the only ones who are not sick
they never miss a step of appetite.

I feel like a child waiting to be born
to waves that pull and push and roll

bruised meat, tenderised
marinated breath of filth and piss

and the rats

the rats, they wait and listen.

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Jennie E Owen’s writing has won competitions and has been widely published online, in literary journals and anthologies. She teaches creative writing for The Open University and lives in Lancashire with her husband and three children.