Birth Certificate, 1914, Marie [girl]

Rachel Jeffcoat

born to summer, to a room above the High Street,

to a still-just-girl who names her in the blood.

Marie, rhymes with carry, the stress on the first syllable like her feet

now slapping flagstones gold as butter, hieing hard away from her mother’s

rising voice. She never hears her name without that carapace of friction,

Marie-my-tribulation, born to age me, so she thinks of her own self, whenever

she has cause, with the same serrated edge. Marie the blabbermouth,

knees jittering under school desks, shouting out the sum before the master

gets to stop. She likes her name in August only, skinning palms to ribbons

on the bristling rounds of hay. The swifts cut staves through stubble,

loud as they like. Calling her Marie Fury. Boggart. Clomping ghost.

She who sneaks away at teatime while the bath fills, tang of coalsmoke,

lies her body low-down on the wide arm of the lock. Sees her shadow self

look strange and careless at her from the blackbelow. Her eyes like flint, like sparks.

RACHEL JEFFCOAT has been widely published, including in The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review and Under the Radar. She was commended in the 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize. Her pamphlet, Familiar, appears in Primers VIII (Nine Arches 2026), and her debut collection, There Is No Word Alive For What I Am, will be published in early 2027 by The Emma Press.