Not my partridge not my pear tree
I
Google tells me the partridge is Christ, ready for the wound.
The temporary pluckers are digging for lead in the flesh.
The urban dictionary says I’ll never be that cool.
Ii
And I read, because you were reading about the scriptures,
how turtle doves became a sacrifice
for those poor or in the wilderness –
their bare nests in palm trees –
two together was needed for the offering,
lovers in glue traps and barbed wire.
Now after this, not even dusty pigeons in the streets.
Iii
The year before we became vegetarian,
Granddad’s hen flew to the window ledge,
pecking the glass to watch us eat roast chicken.
She tapped the glass and tapped again,
clicking she lizard head this way and that.
And she wore black feathers like a widow,
though her sisters fledged in grey, just waited.
Iv
The aviary man is calling birds –
shouting back, and each time
each one reinforces the other,
shots sound in an echo chamber,
and each time, ricochets and hurts.
No one can back down.
V
The week before Christmas, I’m in the gold exchange, forging the stories of 5 gold rings in the discount display. What price they paid for each wedding and the brides’ bare hands.
Vi
The six cripple geese, crutch-winged bone-fanned; hand–fed though they had no problem grazing: no, flight is not the point.
Vii
Lake from the filled-in brick works, dead dark water. Seven swans make the past romantic. Crows like ash black lungs.
Viii
If the future is a new milking machine, no budge room in the stalls for the mothers, what lingering affection does the herd have for the milkmaids of the past?
Ix / X
Lords and ladies waiting by the club. Dancing and leaping, dancing leaping, although they barely sway and fight these days. Decompositions of renaissance paintings.
Xi
Armistice day and a lone piper near Poundland. Delivery robot flows by, programmed with Christmas tunes. All the walkers glide past, head phoned.
Xii
I realised, from the music, everything can be a drum and everything can be the drummer and every thing is beat and the white antelope skin retains the handprints of the one who hit and the tremble of the animal alone, betrays the engine heart beneath.
Still I don’t know if I believe in a connection – not my partridge, not my pear tree.
Sarah Davies was born in Merseyside and lives in Bedford, but misses the sea. She has been published in a range of magazines and is putting together a collection.
BROKE(N)
Have you seen the roads here lately pockmarked with craters?
Smaller and less savage than the ones on the news.
The bus jolts but my life is not in danger.
How soon a new war out guns an old one.
How soon a death toll outstrips the scope of our lament.
I should call Katya ask for news of Ukraine.
Will this war too be forgotten by New Year’s Day?
Already I see office parties every evening.
They have the same desperation as last year.
Somehow my mother still comes into everything.
She would be watching the news while others slept.
She’d be crying enough for everyone stirring the Christmas cake.
There are moments when the sun at a certain angle trips me
and I find the world beautiful again.
I keep doing the most useless things.
Eating paying bills counting puddles in the lane.
Sophia Argyris was born in Belgium, her family are English and Greek. She grew up mostly in Scotland. Her poems have appeared in Atrium, Magma, Paper Boats, Spelt, and Under the Radar amongst others. She was joint winner of the Candlestick Press Wonky Animals Competition 2023.
The World Tilts
The sun hangs in the balance
between day and night,
the jebels’ silhouette sharpens
against the evening palette
of orange-red-crimson.
On the back of desert winds
darkness comes howling,
stars hammer nails of silver
into black skies.
Shepherds swaddle themselves
in abas of wool or camel skin
as they keep vigil on the hills.
The wind holds its breath.
Silence…
…explodes
into thunder of
praise and prayer.
Earth tilts.
Light storms in from the east.
Iris Anne Lewis is a featured writer on the Black Bough Poetry website, won 1st prize in the Gloucestershire Poetry Society competition 2020 and was highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award 2022 and Stanza competition 2023. Twitter/ X: @IrisAnneLewis