We had some fantastic entries to our competition on the subject of ‘Remote’ and it seemed very apt that the competition ended with everyone self-isolating and that we had our meeting remotely over the web. Full details of Leanne Moden’s judge’s report can be found here.
First Place – Jenny Mitchell
How to Grow an Orchid
He marches in at first, back straight,
left, right. Pulls the spare room on his shoulders,
heavy as a trench coat. Hunkers
in an armchair. Reads a barrage
of bad news: World Teeters on the Brink.
Followed by the football scores.
His wife, through quaking
walls, is bomb. Baby’s cry: a siren.
Hard to hear without his squad –
ease of men about to die
watch the same in someone else.
Breast milk makes him think of blood.
After that, he hurries with the radio
dial turned up. Clicks the lock.
Listens for more casualties.
How to grow an orchid. Bach
had twenty children. Did they clench
their fists, threaten hand-to-hand?
The girl shouts Daddy at the door.
All doors are daddy now. He blocks
his ears against her scream. Ache
in his jaw. Tomorrow: outlook bright.
Manly voice of hope. He won’t look down.
But, Jesus, wrists are hard to cut.
Second Place – David Smith
The One Everybody Will Forget
In a few short years, I will be the answer
to a quiz question only a smart ass knows.
Or the solution to a tricky crossword clue.
Two down. One across.
Compare me to Moses seeing the Promised Land
but at least he had the bulrushes and the Tablets of Stone.
Perhaps they also serve, those who orbit and wait
and wait and wait with the meter ticking.
Guess who I had last year in the back of my capsule:
Neil and Buzz! No way. You’re kidding me.
But who remembers who was driving when Kennedy got shot?
Being the loneliest man not on Earth
allows plenty of time for contemplation. No bad thing
since a spacesuit makes for challenging thumb-twiddling.
So I picture the strongest men back there
being assembled, organised into a human pyramid,
grunts and groans ever higher, calls for reinforcements,
adjusting, swaying, reaching out
towards me, flailing, before crashing
down like a felled giant redwood.
Below me, Neil and Buzz bounce around the lunar surface,
an unlikely Adam and Eve. A part of me,
(just how big a part I dare not judge) wants to tease this ship
out of its orbit and slink back home to some sort of immortality.
But like Judas who would name their boy-child Michael after that?
So I hang on, Pop waiting for his daughter to return from her first date.
For a time I will live on in the stories of colleagues, a swell guy,
and the memories of loved ones, a real family man.
For a time. But then?
Neil and Buzz have left their footprints on the Moon;
I will leave mine on air.
Third Place – Alex Hales
Satellite – the night you weren’t there
As the stones spat, a train of stars drove
through the sky – almost neon – (well, it sounds
better that way, doesn’t it?). The carriages so closely linked,
and then they were gone. ‘Maybe it was a shooting star. Or just the mandy,’
said Will, who could track everything on an app,
found Neptune, Andromeda, Orion…
nothing.
I thought of those slices of time you and I’d had,
when it didn’t matter if the sun was on or not. Fingertips Braille. Everything
steroidy, star-stuff, straight to the amygdala. Like time was this giant fucking
pendulum
I didn’t think would swing very fast.
Didn’t the music pause just at the apex of closeness?
In Brighton, where there’s always the wind, the rabbit and k-holes,
this vinyl beach, the flotsam you can’t see.
You have all the time to tread;
at least, it appears that way.
So we saw it – this… moving? driving? strange
train of stars – I thought but couldn’t be sure, the sky
maybe all tricks and mirrors, closer even, or further away.
It turned out Elon Musk had sent out a string of satellites,
just wanted to beam the internet down from space and we were right time,
right place. I thought, yes, more of this kind of communication’s just what we need.
And then – fuck all of those reflections I so thought I’d seen.
I want to hold a real moment up to my ear like a conch. I want the earth not to be round.
I want to slip right off
when only the wind farm lights blink
at exactly the same time.
Highly Commended & Top Local Poet – Linda Cooper
Power Lunch
You turn on That familiar, plastic smile Your I’m fine thank you face The screen hiding your thoughts. I turn off My anxious, smothering tone Decrease the volume Let my eyes do the searching. You fast forward To when you can exit this scene Ignore the signals, take back control Catch up with your rituals on demand. I rewind To life before this distorted power Deleted my untroubled child Hungry for normal service to return. You pause Scan the menu with caution Carefully select the smallest dish Request your order, cancelling sides. I repeat My pleas of encouragement Sugarcoating my demands Praying my input might help. You play With the food on your plate Flick your hair to hide from view Record a mental calorie count. I mute My desperate persuasions Channel my thoughts elsewhere Silently scream please stop. You exit No appetite for food or company Driven by this compulsive disorder You turn your back on the enemy. I press For help, a remote chance of recovery My own efforts only succeeding In pushing all the wrong buttons
Highly Commended – Derek Hughes
Ontario
A line of conifers stretched the track from city to sub-arctic. Forests darken, thicken, engulf. Fallen trees stumble and collapse across peaty channels. Here ghosts of Iroquoi slip silently through branched filaments of water. Anticipation of wolves' howls prickles air as dusk hovers like a buzzard. The only sound from a pair of blue-jays mocking me.
Highly Commended – Roger Elkin
James’s Pembrokeshire Text
Pagan – James texts – All Pagan.
The moon. Sun. Tides. The sea.
Then gestures a concession
But staggering coastline.
And we know what he means:
the land eliding to sea-shore
where waves lisp against cliff-face
and rock – their vowels the sibilants
of salt, of water; and consonants
as hard-edged as shingle
in the sea’s breathing heave –
in, out, in. Again. Again.
And, there, in the wide day sky
greying to blue, a full moon,
hanging, white;
and, just as sudden,
after days of hazy rain and cloud,
the sun, almost cartoon-golden.
So we understand why he understands
how the old tribes honoured and
worshipped them; sacrificed.
But are not dispirited
by history’s ritual
or further heresy of text
as James confesses
Am not missing the internet.
How could he,
being so deeped in Nature’s purlieus,
its visceral, primitive pull,
its remote wildness.
Highly Commended – Ann Cuthbert
A poem written using only words which can be formed from the term ‘Self-isolating’
Fall silent. It floats, stifling life, foiling goals, seats itself on sofas, installs, fastens on, sets in. False lion, it lifts its nose, gloats. No angels, no saints, let’s self-isolate. Salt its tail. Nail it. Seal its fate. Its song of elation stales.
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