I once had a blue budgerigar who attacked itself.
It looked in the mirror tearing feathers from its left wing.
Poor thing never realised mirrors reflect the opposite.

We never liked that bird and buried it in an eggbox.
My brother laid it to rest on last week’s chicken bones.
We gave the cage to a widower who opened his door singing.

I thought of that widower who never did get a budgie,
he told us it wasn’t the muck but the thought of our blue bird
aggressively mimicking Thatcher on the ten o’clock news.

Today Priti Patel appeared wearing blue in The Mirror
I tapped at my screen and swiped her away like that budgie
and thought, I’m just like a Tory hiding what I don’t like to see.

Antony Owen has written six collections of poetry. He was one of the winners of the 2020 Bread and Roses Award for working-class poetry.