poem

Poetry London Competition Runners Up Commended Poems

John Wedgwood Clarke
Limpet
 
You only get one shot at me unless
you’re armed. Miss, and watch me weep
as I weld to my scar; hit, and I’m loss
in a locket, a bull in a nutshell.
Press my foot as you might dig a thumbnail
into your palm to stop from laughing
at a poem beginning, dead, still, lifeless…
hey presto: black speck eyes and a tragic mouth.
But as the weight flows I lift on my skirts
and wander the village paths, keeping
them open while the stars rampage.
What measured me has gone. That he, now she,
is me, makes all the difference: our
stones unravel in the pool of the moon.

 
 
John Wedgwood Clarke is director of Beverley Literature Festival and Bridlington Poetry Festival. He is also UK and Ireland poetry editor at Arc Publications.

 

Peter Daniels
The Captive
 
 
Give a small donation, you bastards, ransom
for a prisoner in a kind of box, his body
a kind of harness that grips all round,
his bursting musculature, look, lovely –
here he is, ladies and gents, your applause
for he’s eager to please, a rhinoceros in heat,
look at him, give him his freedom, salvation
 
or something to make him look satisfied,
let him work his way out of those irons,
requited, salved in his weary skin,
give him balm for its chafing,
rancid butter to oil his limbs,
let him growl and whimper for his tea
– but give him his tea when it’s time, every
beast deserves respect inside
and you’ll give him that, ladies and gentlemen,
worth it to calm his soul
                                        – your soul,
because if he was you it’d be the same, you’re
a captive, your limbs cramped, body disheartened,
home ransacked, inner resources all rinsed out,
but you’re ready for a slave’s retaliation,
waiting for the moment to reinsert
your two pennyworth into the wreck of yourself,
the price of your other life.
 
 
 
Peter Daniels has published a number of pamphlets, the most recent Mr Luczinski Makes a Move from HappenStance in 2011. A full collection is due from Mulfran Press in 2012.

 

Diane Tang
Neanderthals at the Seaside
 
 
Not our thing in the dank, dark, dicky view
of things, the sea. Over it, the unwanted come:
men with lean backs and spears that ride the air
rather than lie still in the hand, as death
is supposed to, waiting to connect direct.
 
Connect direct with what is waiting is what we    
are extremely good at: strutting on thick legbones
through the long cold sting of grasses, heaving
a barrelled torso, holding taut, flailing with the kill,
then folding down by fires and dancing a jig for joy.
 
Oh yes, we have fire, and dancing, and joy
though out there hangs a sky so small and swollen
you'd think dead skins were strung on its limits.
And though, beneath it today, over the old one fallen
in the snow we laid the wool of the beast, and left her.
 
The tribe will never look back, nor dream of one day
basking on a beach, parading on the prom. Still,
we do come down to it, the sea, sniff its salt,
finger its far line, make an art out of skirting its wrath.
And once or twice in a lifetime, here at the edge, laugh.
 
 
 
Diane Tang was born in Ohio and has lived in the UK since the '70s. Her first collection will be published by Oversteps Books in 2012.

Pat Winslow
The Twelve Brothers
 
 
One day my mother showed me twelve coffins.
My father had lined them with wood shavings
and little pillows. ‘The odds are fifty-fifty
he’ll kill you and your eleven brothers. If we
have a girl, he’s planned that she’ll inherit
everything. You’ll have no share of it.’
 
I wasn’t hanging around to find out. None
of us were. She said if it was another son,
she’d raise a white flag. If it was a girl, red.
OK, we said, and left. There was a shed
nearby with an oak tree we liked to climb.
We each stood watch, an hour at a time.
 
It was a girl. The minute that brat filled
her lungs with air, our fate was sealed.
We made a pact. From that day forward
no girl anywhere was safe. Flag-red blood
would flow. Bottle, hammer, razor, knife,
we’d use anything we could to take her life.
 
We went deep into the woods and found
a derelict house. It would’ve been grand –
shooting doves and deer and rabbits to eat
and only washing when we felt like it – but
I was the youngest and therefore weak,
so I had to keep house for them and cook.
 
I had to air the rooms and make their beds
and boil the copper and check their heads
for fleas and lice, scrub their necks and backs,
endure their kicks and slaps and stupid jokes.
I had to learn how to swallow my anger.
I had to learn how to satisfy their hunger.
 
It’s hard to imagine ten years have passed.
They’re a fine brawny lot and now, at last,
I’ve lost my girlish voice and looks. I can’t
honestly say if they ever took some bint
or not and had their way and killed her.
I’ve never heard them speak of murder.
 
Even so, I’m nervous when this bit of skirt
breezes in and presents me with a tiny shirt.
She shows me eleven others. ‘They’re yours,’
she says. ‘It’s proof. You’re my brothers.’
I’m thinking is this a trap/can I trust her/
I should fuck her /no, she’s my sister
 
when I hear them clumping through the trees
the way they do at the end of long sappy days.
They’re hacking branches and snapping twigs
and talking about swapping our hens for pigs.
I can hear them through the open window.
‘Hide out the back,’ I say. But she won’t go.
 
They stride in one by one and stop and stare.
‘Hey up. What’s this? What have we here?’
They clap me on the shoulders. ‘Smart kid.’
They ruffle my hair. ‘All this time you’ve hid
a cunt from us. Where d’you find it?’ ‘It,’ I say,
‘is our sister and I told her she can stay.’
 
‘Did you, now?’ And they sit down and kick
off their boots and they expect me to pick
them up like I always do, but bugger me
if she doesn’t do it and tidy them away.
‘I expect you’ll want something to eat,’
she says and starts rolling up a sleeve.
 
And they’re thinking the skin of her arm,
the freckles, the tiny hairs and how warm,
and if she smells of milk and yeast and fish
and how it might be if she should wash
their backs and necks. We watch each other,
silently, brother trying to outguess brother.
 
 
Pat Winslow’s recent poetry collections include Unpredictable Geometry and Dreaming of Walls Repeating Themselves (Templar Poetry). She is currently working as writer in residence at a prison.