morgana
by jacob ord
When I was a girl I wasn’t really a girl
at least I didn’t want to be a girl. I passed
time flicking unlit matches with my dark eyes
onto the lino of the dining hall in the school
hating all the other girls.
When I was not that girl,
in a summer that snowed,
I took a carriage from school up north, up a hill road
that my Granda’s Grandas had known, had in fact made,
as though that can stand in place of knowing.
And it shouldn’t make a no girl girl shake
with hate for the white earth’s snake toward
a sandstone castle where all the records are kept
that no one bothered to write my old new name.
This I told to a beautiful wizard who was also my mother.
That’s just one of the secrets I had to keep
when I was a girl but not girl
and alone.
None of this would they know
til we’d made it to the gold tower atop the hill
and butchered the king who is definitely not a girl.
My father would set the dynamite
and my brothers would steal the plates
and I would push the carriage down the road
after filling it with my matches made of glances
and I’d send it south to burn the schoolhouse rooms
where I had been a girl but not.
And on the turrets the flags would twirl
into skirts until we burned them to dust
when I was girl who wasn’t a girl, but a weapon,
locked, loaded, still not that girl,
still just about to happen.
jacob ord is a poet from the northumberland coast. their undergraduate degree in creative writing is from manchester metropolitan university and they are currently studying for a master’s in writing poetry from newcastle university.