inside stairwells
girls flock
kicking off
their shoes
school uniforms morph
to plastic plumage
beak-masks elastic
bird-feet
discarded
in a heap
(undressed triangles
of orange felt
muted)
skin strafes cement
words pass
(secret rules
piling up like
eggshells)
their calls
echo off the steps they take
each other’s soundings
(strokes of
kind fury)
learn to gauge threat
the way they catch
light slipping
through dusty glass
inside stairwells
bird-girls
jab one another
with costume beaks
flutter their feathers
sharpen their feet
and their voices
the bare weapons
of their bidding
Michelle Penn grew up in the US and lived in France for many years before moving to London in 2005. Her debut pamphlet, Self-portrait as a diviner, failing, won the 2018 Paper Swans Pamphlet Prize and was published in the UK in September. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, including Runes, Spillway, Shearsman, Magma, and Aesthetica.
(Photograph by Andrew Tobin/Tobinators Ltd)
