Owl fever by Joanne Key

It’s immediately compelling: taut, propulsive and deeply eerie. The mix of animal transformation and the very human details of illness and suffering are perfectly balanced and conjure the fever of its title. Liz Berry

Owl fever

what do I remember
after the chemo
the white feathers
he coughed up striped
and sticky with blood
when he could barely lift his head
from the pillow
and then we found him
suddenly perched on the cot side
the claws of his hands
gripping the bars as he listened intently
to sounds only he could hear
the breeze beckoning
through the open window
and when he refused all treatment
the way he slept for days
finally waking
the fever breaking like an egg
releasing the terrors
and all that came after
the breathlessness and the tremors
the steroids and the hunger
those raving vicious attacks
when he chewed us up
and spat us out
pellets of children’s bones
and when his voice had finally flown
to god knows where
the long brooding silence
and the way he watched us
as if from above
his mind lost to the dusk
whirring in its own circles
a stranger to our human ways
and i remember that night i said
see you tomorrow dad
how he slowly turned his head
to look at me for the last time
with those terrible yellow eyes

How I did it

I was surprised that this poem won, because I wrote it so quickly – of the three poems I entered, it was the one I worked on least. That’s often been the way with my work: the poems I fiddle about with for weeks do less well. I’m beginning to think the ones that come quickly may be tapping into something more authentic.

The poem was a response to a bird prompt from Jo Bell. I’m a member of her Poetic Licence group; she posts a prompt every month, including a lot of sensory detail – they often set off something for me. She warned that ‘the power of bird imagery can overwhelm the poem’, so it’s important to use a light touch.

The ‘owl fever’ title came from a memory of my brother sitting on the stairs in his pyjamas as a child, flapping his arms and saying, ‘I’ve got owl fever!’ The poem started out being about him, but three lines in I started getting flashbacks to my father, as he was dying of lung cancer and alcoholic liver disease over ten years ago.

The steroids he was given for the cancer made his alcohol withdrawal symptoms much worse. He started having hallucinations and paranoid delusions, screaming and swearing, fighting imaginary people, charging down the corridors or barricading himself into his hospital room. He was a violent and scary man even when he was well.

I once found him perched on the edge of the bed, drooling and uncommunicative, in a kind of trance state. Images from that time keep coming back to me. I’ve had a number of debilitating health issues in recent years, one on top of another. I felt they affected my writing voice, making me write in quite a flat way. So when I showed this poem to my writing group I was surprised at how much they liked it.

There’s no punctuation or stanza breaks, because it just came out like that. I thought that was the best way to present it, with one scene flowing into the next – as memories slide into one another, or events when you’re telling a story to someone.