The Bird Rhythms of My Chest

The echocardiogram was routine, 
didn’t reveal the bird calls hidden 
like doves in the attic of a magician’s 
top hat: the muffled woof of a barking owl, 
a baby barn owl’s scream disguised 
as television static, the dinosaur laugh 
of a kookaburra. The starling impersonator  
might have been the rhythmic peaks 
and troughs of the ultrasound scanner  
dragging itself along the milky riverbed 
of my chest. Everything repeated 
in organised insanity—an ornithologist’s 
villanelle with no loose ends. My body 
danced to their calls after the technician left, 
coughed up feathers all pointing  
to the window, some means of escape.

CHRISTIAN WARD

Christian Ward is a UK-based poet with recent work in Acumen, London Grip, Dream Catcher, Dodging the Rain and Canary. He was longlisted for the 2023 Aurora Prize for Writing, shortlisted for the 2023 Ironbridge Poetry Competition and 2023 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and won the 2023 Cathalbui Poetry Competition.