Owen Gallagher Poetry | British poet | Modern British poet

Tea

When mother stopped off from cleaning houses,
I would have scrubbed and buffed ours heavenly bright
for her return. We would sit and slurp tea
and make the most outrageous noise.
each outdoing the other.
‘I better be off,’ she’d say, ‘before I drop.’
She had floors to mop and windows
to clean before she could dream.
 
The day a policeman knocked on my door, 
and muttered, ‘Your mother’s dead,’ 
and left, I sat and slurped my tea, recalling
how our cups rattled in their saucers from laughter,
how she winked as she rose, wiggled her nose.
I cleaned my house till it gleamed.
 
‘Da!’
 
Rain ran off him
like an overflowing gutter.
He couldn’t strike a match to light his Woodbine.
 
He stood in line with other men.
The ganger told you to board the revving van
if he knew you could handle a pick and shovel.
There was no sick or holiday pay.
 
These men built houses they could never live in.
They were dropped off back in the darkness
to sleep and rise, sleep, and rise, in their tenement flats.
 
And there was I, a ten-year-old,
delivering newspapers to the world before school
to help pay the priest, the rent man, and the tick man,
who came with an open palm.
 
I still see men like my father                             
on street corners, waiting.
Once, I called out, ‘Da!’
 
I Saw a New World being Assembled
 
In the tenements
there were workers
who built dreams for others,
 
singers who got drunk
on rebel songs,
fighters who fought
 
for themselves
in the workplace
and lost every round
 
all in revolt against
an assembly line
of masters.
 
I saw a new world
being assembled     
in a sweatshop
 
where dreamers,
singers, fighters,
unfurled a trade union flag,
 
their voices bolted
and welded into one.
 

Assembling
        Blackbirds

 
After a long shift on the assembly line
     my fingers stalk the black
and white keys, a conveyer belt
     of minims and crotchets
that will rhyme and chime with myself.
     I play till I’m exhausted
and wake to stand again,
    at my allotted slot
and compose in my head
     to keep the blackbirds
singing at full throttle,
     jostling for a place,
before the factory horn
     blasts them away from the stave.
 
 
Striker in a Sari
 
I can still see her at the far end of the street,
in a coat with a sari beneath, hoisting a placard:
‘Workers united will never be defeated!’
 
She made her way to join the picket line
to demand their jobs be reinstated.
Nothing could stop her, not the state,
the courts, or the police.
 
Supporters from Glasgow, Liverpool,
Cardiff… cheered her on.
When she reached her workplace,
she raised a megaphone.
 
You could hear a leaflet drop.
You could hear her boss
and ministers in Parliament sigh.
Her words changed lives.
 
When the odds against me are cliff high,
I think of Mrs. Desai.

Owen Gallagher was born in Gorbals, Glasgow. He lives in London and was a teacher in Southall, London. 
He attended the University of London and the University of Glamorgan.

His forthcoming collection, The Lonesome Cowboys will be published by Salmon Poetry in Ireland, May 2025.
His recent publication: Clydebuilt, Smokestack Books, England, 2119 was shortlisted for The Scottish Poetry Book of the Year, 2021.

His previous collection A Good Enough Love published by Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2015 was nominated for the T.S. Eliot Award.
He has two other poetry collections: Tea with The Taliban, Smokestack Books, 2012, and 
Sat Guru Snowman, Peterloo Poets, 2001.