THE FOLLOWING POEM WAS SELECTED IN WINGWORD POETRY PRIZE 2023 LONGLIST.
My rot shifts.
Under waves of wheat
Hazed with a shower of acid
On my fifteenth summer,
I decay in pieces,
In silence.
My heart is still in flames.
Of raging ache
I was forever fused with hay.
To make a scarecrow
Kneading my rot for eternity,
Again, my feathered, hollow bones were unearthed for lust.
Broken necks screaming
from cracks in the dry earth
“Our winged bones were only hollow!"
My story, a warning,
A thread, lore,
A nightmare and a cautionary tale,
At any given time, whole existences
could be reduced.
to cages, to meat, or to death.
In grave silence, I chant
our forgotten names
Vanished bones and homes still in flames.
Stoned and burned at stakes
With cheers from crowd,
The collective us, declared a threat.
Shadowed skinned,
Ominous, Dirt,
A crow sinned at birth.
Wings stitched meticulously,
As an animating heart
Of a girl's nightmare,
A tale removed from history,
Passed on only in memories,
and edges of perverse blades
Names etched on our feathers,
Even if only as fear,
Stories lurking in blood as blisters
I, a humane body carved,
ground and braided with hay
Into a marred silhouette of fear.
To scare away any traces of flight,
Resistance, uprising of bleeding sisters,
Marching, tear-eyed rage around our graves.
Ripe fruits, untouchable,
Innocence murked with animal perversity.
Disguised as mired morality.
My girlhood, stolen.
Raped by familiar monsters
Every dawn is a hell of repetition.
My empty, lulling lap
yearning for my snatched children,
Every dusk is a hell without moderation.
My husband, stoned for weeping at my grave,
In the stillness of every little girl's nightmare,
I am a scarecrow hanging towards the end of time.
As a warning,
A threat, lore,
A nightmare and a cautionary tale,
I, a scarecrow, made
to cower munity stirring
under the black veils of my fellow maidens.