Roberto – Market Bird

While children kneel at your cage in awe
edge offerings of cashew nuts, chopped fruit,
curse words into your magnificent beak,
mums settle carrier bags at tired wet feet
delay for flashes of Hulk Hogan yellow beneath
that fancy marine tuxedo.

I’d say you’re more Mexican wrestler than U S of A
more El Santo than Bret The Hitman Hart –
flexing that zebra-print mask bought off a man
who knows a man who was seeing a man about a dog
when they fell off the back of a van or a lorry.

I bet your feathers run smooth as one-way traffic
on Federal Highway 45D between Mexico City & Querétaro.
Bet your poison dart frog eye spied me the day
I dared my arm deep into a cool sack of sunflower hearts
for the sheer closed-in-ness of it.

So, what, Roberto, is your finishing move?
The Claw Hammer! The Flying Bottle Opener!
perhaps… the Jalapeno Lock Pick!

& nowww… innn the red corner!… Weighing in
at 1.5 kilograms!… Hailing from the rainforest of Brazil!
O Pequeno Mágico Roberto!

Yes, if you could shapeshift into anything,
it would be the greatest magician in the pet shop,
vanish the ache of reappearing.

In 2025 Jason Lovell received both the Freedom to Write Award from the John Hewitt Society/Irish PEN and the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. A Forward Prize 2026 nominee, he is supported by the Arts Council NI. His work has appeared in Abridged, Ragaire and Fortnight.

Note: Āra : large, brightly coloured neotropical parrots specifically the Ara macaw / derived from the Latin for ‘altar’