She worked in a supermarket before
Showing women the way to the leeks, soaking the mop, affixing stickers to the cheeks of apples
Born in Skewen— that railway town fossilized by a burst mineshaft, flood water like the insides
of the cleaning bucket, threading under doorways, into car windows
Then thrust out of Neath Port Talbot with its blast furnaces and soaked-through floors, its
vegetable aisles, the quietness of the monastery, and into fame with a song about wanting, a
song about fear, a song mocked and loved, Forever’s gonna start tonight
She’s known for this
For forever
For bright eyes, a shadow
For a voice like the tapping of a blast furnace, its ancient fires
For songs that belt their dripping wax of drama onto turntables, hopeful
And for her marriage to a judo competitor
And for her miscarriage; bloody agony on Tabloid pages
And for a farm in Portugal, home to confused Lusitanos with snow-like faces
These are the facts of her life
Hair stiff like radio antenna
Legs spiders caught in webs of nylon
I went to get bananas today
The green ones are best
I thought of her
Bright eyes, shadow
A girl organizing lemons
A girl who’s nervous/ That the best of all the years have gone by