Daughters of Eve by Lucy Whalen (England, 22)

I
I sing when the storm comes,
Because the fields and streams and wind farms
That fly past the window
Need to dance.
Everything becomes witchcraft
Where there is rain,
And on the other side of
Thunder claps
The sky cries for me,
My Daughter.

II
A silent wind scatters ashes
Across the glass,
And at 125mph, I run away from
The lambs my sister
Ate raw among the afterbirth
Staining the straw.

III
Mother paints the sky in misty grey
To tell us to dress
As mermaids and mad hatters
And meet in the church
With the wine-stained floor
To eat the fruit she saved for us,
So the next time they gather us in the hall
And give us beads to beg with,
We can tell them even Mary
​Was a daughter of Eve.

Lucy Whalen is a poet from Durham, England. She studied French Studies and English Literature at Lancaster University, the highlight of which was writing a 4,000-word essay on sexism in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Her poem Angel was recently published in Cake Magazine and her main inspirations are Carol Ann Duffy's Feminine Gospels and Elizabeth Train-Brown's Salmacis.