On Cowardice

This year, I joined a writing collective called HOMEWORK. We meet once a month to decide on a writing prompt and share the poems we've put together over the previous thirty days. 

It's been a game-changer for me, a real kick-up-the-arse for my poetry, and a way to give me the impetus to write something every month that I wouldn't normally write. 

Last month, our prompt was oxymorons so I decided to write about the bravery needed to admit your own cowardice. 

The poem came out a bit dark, but maybe that’s the point…  

Chicken Heart 

This is the year of cowardice.

Toad-belly pale and stagnant. 

And I am yellow lichen, shade-quenched 

and touch-starved. Soft as unexamined 

unease. Better left unmentioned.

Outside, my mother is dead-heading daisies, 

bearing each wilting yellow flower

in gentle, careful fingers. Chicken feather petals 

falling at her feet. 

I read somewhere that you can 

hypnotise chickens with lines 

drawn on pavements in chalk.

God knows, I am a crime scene now, 

so I trace an outline of my body.

Mark out my own absence,

waiting for the flock to descend. 

Hypnotised by listless afternoon 

sunlight, I scrutinise the yellow wallpaper 

behind my eyelids. Think of toad bellies, 

dead daisies, and the headless chicken panic

creeping across my chest again. 

But those birds are ruthless, really. 

I’ve seen them snatch flies from the air 

like sprung traps.

I am no sprung trap. I am the colour of illness, 

only comfortable performing a sepia-clotted 

half-self, until I am holy with unrequited endings. 

A unretrieved memory. A jaundiced liver. 

A sudden collapsing lung.

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