Into the Furnace
Show us your metal, they say
as if I was threaded through
with a girder of steel, a strut
of unbending resolve.
Times are difficult, they say:
babes without silver spoons,
the unalloyed pain of those
without jobs, income.
It’s a copper-bottomed truth
that each and every blow, struck
with a weighted hammer, leaves
lives misshapen, out of true.
Sue Wallace-Shaddad has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University/Poetry School. Her pamphlet A City Waking Up was published by Dempsey and Windle in October 2020. Sue writes poetry reviews and is Secretary of Suffolk Poetry Society.