Noon: I emerge – my bed is an archaeological dig. I am one of those Venus relics: womb, stuffed with maternity books, boobs, bling-ed with suckling babies. Doesn't matter that my face needs a filter or my lips need syringes of filler or my legs need a wax or a razor. I don't care when I say, 'I'm fat.' and you say, 'But, oh, you are pretty.' I don't care. Fuck your beauty ideals. Sarah Drury, 2025 Self-portrait with heated rollers by Sarah Drury, oils on canvas
~there is beauty in death
I remember seeing an old episode of ‘Tales of the Unexpected’. It is a British show based on the stories of Roald Dahl. The show ran between 1979 and 1988. This particular episode, ‘The Sound Machine’, is set in a sunny suburban summer before the Second World War. Mr. Klausner develops a box which amplifies the tiniest sound. It records the screams of flowers as they are being cut. I was 11 years old and very disturbed by the idea of plants feeling pain! This memory stayed with me. I am now 55 and always feel sad when I see flowers in a vase. Although they are beautiful, I am much happier to see them in the garden.
I wrote this poem as I was gazing at a vase of roses on my living room table. The blooms had wilted and there were petals on the table, shriveled and pitiful. A saddening sight.
Rose
How proud was this rose. Its deep
pink petals were velvety and rich.
My hand brushed over a swathe of
suitors hurling bouquets at my door.
The gerberas, all sunshine yellow, resonate
with optimistic women; yoga mats and chai lattes.
They cling to life, fronds of petals falling.
The table littered with near death.
Now the rose shatters, though my
gentle hands cup its parch-dry petals.
As though love can bring back the broken,
like Jesus and the old bones of Lazarus.
The deep pink has faded to the lips of a
dying woman. She waters the garden
every evening, yet still the flowers
shut their eyes.
©2022 Sarah Drury
I sat on my balcony and listened to the blackbird leading the dawn chorus. In the early morning hours, I wrote this poem. I find birdsong so joyous! It uplifts and gives me a sense of freedom.
I sit on the balcony, the moon
not shining in a miner's coal sky.
The birds must know something.
They sing with voices looped
around my breath's plume; pale –
a ghost, an albino wren; its beak
submerged in a lake. A blackbird
is a piccolo; your smooth hands
silkworms, spinning skeins on my
breasts. Your breath, a warm breeze
at the nape of my neck. The white
dove's wings are flutters in my chest
as I stargaze; I look for your heart.
I see your lips in the blackbird's
song. Your whispers beguile me,
is that so wrong?
©2023 Sarah Drury
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
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 