Jun 27, 2020

A Gentlewoman by Jenny Mitchell

Updated: Jan 13, 2021

A Gentlewoman

She throws a shadow on the morning

Glories in her flower bed

Bends to yank the fullest life

Out of land she names as dirt

Places every stalk inside a swinging basket

Pall-beared on her arm

Smiling at this murderation as the crows

Stare down knowing she’s their kind

When she stamps the blighted roses

Till their colours scream

Walks triumphant to the house

Puts the dead to stand in glass

Jenny Mitchell

Jenny Mitchell is joint winner of the Geoff Stevens’ Memorial Poetry Prize 2019, and winner of the Fosseway Poetry Competition 2020. She was shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes Poetry Competition 2019, and has been placed/commended in several others. She’s been published in The Rialto, The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar etc. Work is forthcoming in Poetry Birmingham and The African and Black Diaspora International Journal.

A debut collection, Her Lost Language, was selected as one of 44 Poetry Books of 2019

(Poetry Wales).

Jenny Mitchell - Indigo Dreams

Twitter @jennymitchellgo