Rhea Seren Phillips
Priodferch y Meddyg Pwysig
November 1868
Y Llau are restless; crestless crack.
The bride will abide attack.
A stray wheeze will t-ea-se annwyl tad;
rebellious cawl rile bile black.
Demented, seg-men-ted, shack;
Peri.winkle crin.kle. clad.
November 1868
Y Llau are restless; crestless crack.
The bride will abide attack.
A stray wheeze will t-ea-se annwyl tad;
rebellious cawl rile bile black.
Demented, seg-men-ted, shack;
Peri.winkle crin.kle. clad.
1 The child teased a wheeze as her tad stumbled over in the hope of a miracle. His eyes, crystallised and glazed in beryl syrup, had taken on a familiar sheen of sweat. Broad hairless hands grasped an emaciated azure wrist. The slip of a girl groaned as bones shifted in his grasp. He placed her hand back down onto the bedsheet, drained by the weight of her. The ribbons in her hair were a crooked hour glass, close to the end of its time. The crucifix had not shifted from her white cotton breast, iridescent amongst farmhouse muck. Torn straw came loose from his sleeve and fell into the little girl’s hair. Her father plucked it from the soft curls as if a tick that sought to do his Sal harm.
The Welsh bride slept soundlessly as a roar of farmers ascended throughout green country. The Big Man did not feel the need to be present as Winter (1868) twisted treachery between the pure language, besmirched by the Judas within its heart. Little Sal’s kingdom furrowed a hollow in her rib, arm broken and limp to milky flesh, icing then curdling as morning vanished. She was the landowner of her body; a miracle of God. She was one of his pearls, a chaste decoration. She watched her adoring crowd from across an unpassable river, rived from reality in pursuit of God’s good work. She spoke a harsh language that fell upon her tongue while steam belched from her throat, cautioning the village into silence.
The Welsh bride slept soundlessly as a roar of farmers ascended throughout green country. The Big Man did not feel the need to be present as Winter (1868) twisted treachery between the pure language, besmirched by the Judas within its heart. Little Sal’s kingdom furrowed a hollow in her rib, arm broken and limp to milky flesh, icing then curdling as morning vanished. She was the landowner of her body; a miracle of God. She was one of his pearls, a chaste decoration. She watched her adoring crowd from across an unpassable river, rived from reality in pursuit of God’s good work. She spoke a harsh language that fell upon her tongue while steam belched from her throat, cautioning the village into silence.
Ei Chorff Bach
Wrth lowcio harrowed eyes with lewd
abundance bestrewed by stewed mair;
‘…a strange, fetid smell about the bed…’
feldspar guise her cheeks, despair viewed,
‘By 10pm Sarah was gulping air.’
scare hauteur from the têr lair
of the gaunt child; wan ice-hold haunt
‘The nurses had seen many people die before,…’
an un.smil.ing aunt; Sal ensnare
and taunt psychopomp with plump vaunt.
…Mynd i ffwrdd; tad…avaunti toad…prair.
‘but never they later admitted, of starvation.’
Wrth lowcio harrowed eyes with lewd
abundance bestrewed by stewed mair;
‘…a strange, fetid smell about the bed…’
feldspar guise her cheeks, despair viewed,
‘By 10pm Sarah was gulping air.’
scare hauteur from the têr lair
of the gaunt child; wan ice-hold haunt
‘The nurses had seen many people die before,…’
an un.smil.ing aunt; Sal ensnare
and taunt psychopomp with plump vaunt.
…Mynd i ffwrdd; tad…avaunti toad…prair.
‘but never they later admitted, of starvation.’
2 Sal ferch fach had taken on a strange, fetid smell. It was nameless. The nurses enmeshed in a thick unpleasant blanket kept their cool. Soaked the Sahara swollen from cheilitis as its brain turned a cheek to redemption. There was a possibility of a miracle, even as the bach metamorphosed into an aquatic, despotic nightmare. The bottle curdled with laiche bile, poisoned by a slab of dumpling, prodded till bruises blossom like blush. The cadaver is alive again…is the…
Sian Busby, A Wonderful Little Girl ‒ The True Story of Sarah Jacob, The Welsh Fasting Girl [London: Short Books, 2004].
Sian Busby, A Wonderful Little Girl ‒ The True Story of Sarah Jacob, The Welsh Fasting Girl [London: Short Books, 2004].
© Copyright Rhea Seren Phillips 2020
Rhea Seren Phillips is a PhD student at Swansea University. She is researching a modern Welsh identity and the Welsh metrical tradition in English. She has been published in Molly Bloom, Poetry Wales, Envoi, Parallel.Cymru, The Conversation and The Edge of Necessary: Innovative Welsh Poetry 1966-2018 (Boiled String and Aquifer Press), among others. Rhea runs a website dedicated to the learning of the Welsh metrical tradition in English (https://grandiloquentwretch.wordpress.com/).