Death of a swift
I am a clock.
How many chimes
until I am
a swift?
A blackbird?
This is a fine song.
I weave blue ribbons
in my hair to catch
dragonflies.
Their lace wings
shroud my eyes.
A womb gorged
with embryos waits
til the next time
I die.
©2024 Sarah Drury
I was very excited to have been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize in 2022, with this poem! It was inspired by an incident which occurred as I sat in the hospital gynaecology department. An immigrant woman, heavily pregnant, was trying to communicate to the receptionist, but had no English. The receptionist was shouting at the woman as though she were a second class citizen. Talk about dehumanisation!
AN IMMIGRANT DARES TO SING
The bellies are fecund, dumpling-doughed
in their roundness.
The names roll, no one choking.
I clutch my pot, all yellow, all of it.
In walks a womb. A refugee cradles it.
It is full of child but does not exist for
its mother has no tongue to match our ears and
she knows none of our songs.
The receptionist gets loud and slow, and people stare.
This woman has the audacity, they say
to bring her womb to birth babies, steal roofs
from heads and snatch notes from palms.
To sleep with ears not bleeding and folds of flesh
safe in the knowledge they’re her own.
I am ashamed to be English.
To nurture a visible womb.
I am unable to sing Arabic.
©2022 Sarah Drury
A BLUEBIRD IN EIGHT WAYS
~ After Wallace Stevens
I
A poet is a bluebird
who drizzles the sky
with indanthrene songs
II
I am making words
out of the bluebird’s tongue,
littered on the paper
like a rejection letter.
III
The bluebird looks at me
with its reticent eye -
wants to sprinkle lies
in the blackbird’s ear.
IV
I have no time for cheats.
Bluebirds are full of infidelity,
wagging their sweet
little tails at the worms.
V
I know a fine song
if it licks my heels.
I smile and my breast heaves
at the fortissimo.
VI
When the bluebird flies away
the chicks’ chasm-jaws
snatch at a stopped watch.
VII
The snow dusts the blue wings.
Makes snow angels on the ice.
I fall, my womb a pomegranate.
VIII
I never did fit in a box.
Too big dreams for a small forest.
No blackbirds with carbon plumage.
I want diamonds.
Copyright © Sarah Drury 2022
Wallace Stevens, (1954), 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York. Random House.
Images by krstnwatts0 and Johnny Gunn from Pixabay
Many, many years ago I had a very frightening experience. I was young – around 14 – and my life pretty much revolved around playing the cello. I joined an orchestra in Lincoln, which is a fair drive away from my hometown. An older man, must have been sixty-plus, used to give me a lift there. There were usually several of us, but this one night I was alone with him on the journey home. He stopped his car and made a very inappropriate move. It was dark, and he had pulled his car over to the side of the desolate country lane. I screamed and went ballistic, which must have taken him aback, as he quietly drove me home.
That is the backstory for this poem. Blackpool Tower is a metaphor, but I won’t explain and ruin the images your mind will weave as you read!
The layby takes me back to the lanes not lit up like Blackpool Tower, where I fell, illuminated by blown bulbs. I should not have been hitching rides with dirty men, him telling me we couldn’t make babies with his thing choked in rubber. His death would be better. I would prefer a cadaver. Stiff fingers, curled, like questions. His wife. Evenings, he slipped into her. The usual in, out, in, out. Nothing in it for her. Never is. Copyright © Sarah Drury 2022
My husband passed away 12 years ago, which affected me deeply for a long time. I have come to terms with his death, which was traumatic. I wrote this poem as a tribute to our love.
GLASS You hold me, I am porcelain. I am chipped in places, but not broken. You like the chinks and cracks, they let hope shine in. Our lips meet in earthshine, until the moon’s shadow dances at my throat. Your hands, they are granite, they are feathers. I like the crowns of thorns you wear upon your palms. They make me bleed when you place them on my breasts. I know we are living amongst the dying. I am Venus, you create me. You take me from my abstract world and paint me into starry skies above the Rhone. Your kind hands model the widow from the girl. You carve me out of glass to see if this heart still beats – if it is still yours. Copyright © Sarah Drury 2022
the starry-eyed mermaid 