After Emily Valentine, 2013
She started out in a factory –

             up before the cock crows

and scuffs its spurred, scaled feet
in a land           far, far, away                  (still)

where men      and women sleep

in cages, baker’s dozen to each dormitory –
as any piece of plain plastic does
until, landed in the artist’s hand,

unaided by Bede, as ornament

she is feathered, made unique
                          in a gypsy’s metamorphosis,

hers becoming coquettishly, traitorously his.