Andalusia by Charlie Bowden

Angry fathers, angrier daughters.

Fathomless fury falls far from the tree

after the branches snapped, emptiness billowing,

filling the space at the seed’s lap.

Orange ground betrays the sound of maternal succour,

mediating like a lich of leaves, reanimating a crumbling curtain

of motherhood.

The dead in Andalusia tell no tales

not known to old wives, cleaving their house in two with a scythe

while staying on the ground like gum in a stomach,

seven years gone, seeking no glory or crown.

When the conkers fall, crashing to the earth,

they are swallowed up by the human hearth,

dashing through the soil just to let the toads

and their shrivelled stalactite roads boil.

The cracks in trees should not be corrected

with a mother’s metal coil.

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“‘Andalusia’ was a (rare) poem I had the title for before I had the words as I wanted to write material inspired by the names of locations, buildings and people to see what it would draw out. Other poems in this series were named after things I was more familiar with but I chose Andalusia just because I was intrigued by the name and after writing I wasn't sure if writing about a place I had little knowledge about was worth anything, though later I realised it still had merit even just as a response to the emotions drawn up from the name and the limited research I did on the area.”

Charlie Bowden (he/him) is a student from Hampshire, England, who discovered a love for writing poetry in lockdown after spending years studying it at school. His work has been included in collections by Young Writers and the Stratford Literary Festival among others and he won the 2021 Forward/emagazine Creative Critics Competition. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @charliebpoetry for more.