Gold Wing

Anna-May Laugher

after Alessandro Sicioldr

Delivered by courier,

she placed it in an incubator,

obsessed over degrees

and turning schedules.

She would, in some way, be a mother.

Expecting a bird, she wove a nest

out of grasses, moss and rabbit fur.

Learnt to play a flute,

enough to pass on notes

for its little throat to practise with.

As the shell began to split,

she wanted to assist—use tweezers,

interfere, hasten the emergence.

There was no bald pink birdlet

with unseeing eyes and helpless legs.

It was a prince already crowned,

judgement on his tight gold face

as if she were his first mistake.

She tried to pick him up,

hold him to herself.

He bit her arm. It bled.

Red issued down her dress.

She dropped him, broke

his costume wing.

He bit again. She wrung

his neck. And wandered off

saying, Never to be king

then, never to be king.

ANNA-MAY LAUGHER’S work has been published in magazines such as Southbank Poetry, Tears in the Fence and Lighthouse, and anthologised in From Palette to Pen (Holburne Museum) and The Poetry of Sex (Penguin). Her pamphlet, Blow This, is published by Flarestack. She is obsessed with ekphrastic poetry.