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Best Poems Written by Polly Davies

Below are the all-time best Polly Davies poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Polly Davies Poem

Old Shaftesbury Woman

Concrete dust drifts like sand across a coastal path.
An old woman battered with facial features that hung on her face, 
Disconnected and hanging. 
She leans forward in her blumonge, waterproof, unwashed nylon flares from Matalan. 
They ruffle in the wind as she looks out withdrawn onto the A350.

Her gaze is muffled by a sheen of intoxication, 
She tries with the majority of her self to keep her lids from closing, 
Mascara encrusted into the creases of her skin, 
Almost soldering her lashes together in a gluelike fashion. 
Leans hazardously towards the path of oncoming traffic,
Gesturing with open arms to the creatures of metal that push past her. 
The only trace of their moment in time is a gust that pushes her body back to safety as it, Confused and unobservant,
Collapses onto the urban stream that claims her yet again.

I watch as she continues to stumble on, 
Reaching out to every vehicle that steams on past, 
She does not see me. 
She is clogged by something greater and more sombre than I know. 
She is a perfect reflection of the time and place, 
She is what we all are feeling but continue not to show in fear of the outcome.
She is us.

Details | Polly Davies Poem

What you don't know won't hurt you

~that she saw her mother as a child lying strewn on the kitchen floor black and blue~
~that the taste does not matter only that it should be sufficient~
 
               that what you don't know won’t hurt you 
 
~that she’d let those who don’t know her home feel the fight stuffed in her school blouse~
~that she has fraternal half-siblings with unknown identities~
 
              that what you don’t know won’t hurt you 
 
~that her mother had a secret child she gave to the church~
~that I am of Welsh descent~
 
               that what you don’t know won’t hurt you 
 
~that she wishes to see her only son more often than the present~
~that she dreams of her youth as she had to grow up too young~ 
 
               that what you don’t know won’t hurt you
 
~that I should only save and not indulge in frivolities~
~that she has never left her hometown’s four walls~
 
               that what you don’t know won’t hurt you 
 
~that in her eyes, no one will ever be good enough for her son~
~that he, like her, never got to be what he was meant to be~

Details | Polly Davies Poem

Neatness and Godliness

Every picture I’ve seen of you as a child,
You wear your hair in plaits.
A stern middle parting and two dark brown braids
Falling down on each shoulder. 
A maypole’s dream.

You would do your best to wash them when you could,
When shampoo was available,
Or even in the single, small bathroom.
You would vigorously scrub your face too 
With a brush and a bar of soap.
Until it stung.

It would get the dirt out you see,
Always look the most presentable you can,
As instilled by your father with his lean frown that never faltered.
Neatness and cleanliness are next to godliness, Georgina.
The dirt never leaves, though;
It’s contagious.

Fingers, toenails, arms, neck, behind the ears,
The remnants from the bombed buildings’ skeletons
You were just playing on from the previous night. 
Air-raid sirens wailing like a baby in distress.
Arms wrapped around brothers in silence as instructed, 
You never cease to be their second-in-command maternal figure. 
No brother now.
That cheeky five-year-old who followed you down Chelsea’s streets
Was taken by the fires, by the wailing.

Now you're wailing as you hold onto the hand of your mother
As she takes you to the ‘hospital’,
A large brick building holding a sign with ‘Barnardo’s’ 
Written in polite cursive over the arched doorway.
Panic fills you like the silence in the left side of your head,
An intense realisation of lacking in the grimy hospital room, 
Of your parents, your brother, of the bone behind your left ear. 
You say: When is my mother coming?
And are met with the same response: 
She visited you whilst you slept,
A lie only revealed to you as you heard the nurses mutter.
They just couldn’t afford her.

You pretend not to hear and scrub your face free from the dirt.
You plait your hair and continue to wait another day.