A remarkable life
Once they’d hoiked out her irradiated
heart it powered
steam turbines to keep us warm.
Her titanium sternum, dripping
in parsley green, was lowered carefully
into a cove off Dubai
where scuba divers dart in between
her curving ribs like tropical fish
and pause to take photos
wrapped in her chest cavity.
Her glorious mouth, now safely de-barbed,
was mounted on a plinth
in Hartlepool. Birds nest where those icicle
teeth once glinted.
Now and then, we throw her voice to scare the kids.
We tell them it’s thunder.
Niall Firth is a journalist with New Scientist and lives with his wife and daughter in Walthamstow. His poetry has appeared in The Reader and Ink, Sweat and Tears among others. @niallfirth.
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