Guest Poem by Anna Barker

Anna Barker is an award-winning novelist, poet, and short story writer. Writing as Anna Ralph, her first novel The Floating Island (Arrow, 2008) won a Betty Trask award from the Society of Authors. Her second novel, Before I Knew Him (Arrow, 2009), was shortlisted for a Good Housekeeping Good Read award. In Rain Hare Anna ventured into short fiction with tales that explore the connections we make and lose. As a poet she won the 2022 Indigo Dreams Publishing Prize for ‘My Hen as My Vagina’ – a love story. She has also had poems published in Typehouse and Humana Obscura. ‘When I think of my body as a crow’ is from her unpublished debut collection: Book of Crow

When I think of my body as a crow

We slide together:
my flesh, your feather,

your jet eye, the haw you draw across in sleep,
the patient keel of your sternum,
the steel of your rib

your beak to stitch the vane, the silken ley,
the tap of talons on glass,
the hollow bone that lends my shape,

your pulse of blood, smell of hot metal,
stash in the kettle,
the word you hold in your throat like an egg.