Zoë Green

Wanton

As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods: 
They kill us for their sport. 
Shakespeare, King Lear

My father said I was good as gold,
quiet as a mouse, wouldn’t say boo

to a goose, never hurt a soul
until I wasn’t, would, did – until

I became silver-sparkling bad,
until my voice sprinkled broken ice

singing on the tide; and I ran at
the geese with arms flapping wide,

wielding words like scalpels until
the man across the table cried:

had I always been a cruel child?
Why had I brought him here, why

let him order the quattro formaggi,
if I’d known all along what I’d do?

Zoë Green has been published by The Interpreter’s House, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Wales, Under the Radar, Southword, The London Magazine, The Scottish Poetry Library and Poetry Salzburg Review. This year, she’s been commended in the Southword Editor’s Prize, has been nominated for a Forward Prize by Carmen et Error, and two of the five poems on the shortlist for the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Prize were hers. Her debut collection, Charm, was published in 2026 by Valley Press.

Zoë wrote this about her poem:

This poem emerged in the depths of January during Clare Shaw and Kim Moore’s Writing Hours. We began with a cliché and went from there. In the poem, a persona from a culture in which girls’ obedience and quietness is prized, revolts and finally finds her voice. However, that action and decisiveness isn't the triumph it should be: callousness prevails and her behaviour becomes conflated, even in her own mind, with being ‘bad’ so that the residual emotion is guilt rather than relief or pride.