Jungle Owlet
       

What you didn't tell me
is how poachers cut off their claws

and break bones in one wing
so they can't perch or fly,

that their eyes are sold as pujas,
boiled in broth, so herdsmen

can see in the dark.
You didn't say how sorcerers

keep their skulls, their barred feathers,
their livers and hearts,

or how they drink their blood and tears.
You didn't mention how a tortured

owl will speak like a young girl
to reveal where treasure is buried.

My kind granny who took me in
when I was homeless,

who sat down this very evening
after I had gone to bed

and wrote Mother a stern letter,
telling her that she must take me back,

it doesn't matter where — Paris, Wales,
Timbuktu. No more excuses,

you are tired. And here, your slanted writing
is almost illegible, but what

I think it says is that you cannot
look after a teenage owlet.

You use your favourite pet name.
I've never spoken of this before.

I call it up my gullet from the pit
at the bottom of my thirteenth year,

along with my crushed bones,
my stolen blood, and I spit it out

through my torn-off beak, in
language that passes for human.

Tweet

Copyright © 2021 Pascale Petit All rights reserved
from Tiger Girl
Bloodaxe Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission