Here are the top three entries in our 2024 open poetry competition.
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Third place
Sunken Sailor by Aman Gill
“You’re different”
Unsurprisingly you’re the same, your features may have changed,
Maybe it’s all the alcohol you’ve consumed,
All the sadness that’s brewed,
I wish I never liked you
When sober, I swear you’re 3 inches taller,
Face less swollen, skin clear and opal, eyes like diamonds
You flush at my compliments,
It’s almost cute
I’d almost forgotten about you, you’d drifted so far outta sight
But every 3 months you wash up ashore, wipe my self esteem on the floor,
I listen to every drunken voice note, watch fragments of your nights while I sit clinging to my sides, Back against the wall trying not feel lonely,
I’ll never admit I want you to hold me
I half expect to see you standing behind my door, turns out at 2am you tried
But you’re at my old address and I’m shivering under moonlight, standing on my porch with a
flashlight, waiting for you to arrive
This time you hollered out to me from a taxi, incoherent and slurred
The driver wished me good luck as you stumbled at the curb
Is it bad we’ve done this before?
I watch you climb like Bambi up my stairs,
Dare I tactfully walk first?
Let my hips guide you to my room,
Your hands straying, it’s only ever a night your staying
The morning always hurts.
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Second Place
Silent–is–raw? Sal isn’t wiser? by Helen Kay
We sit at her kitchen table in our set
Places, but your carver is stiff, empty.
The words husband and brother are odd
Socks now. Only sisters-in-law remain..
To keep busy, she has been tidying,
gives me my grandad’s diaries from the war –
air raids and plum jam in copperplate –
and a thesaurus you nicked from school.
We struggle with a crossword anagram
An actor’s name. When I text my son,
her nephew, for help, her daughter, my niece,
our human Soda-stream, facetimes her news.
Sister-in-law. I make words from the letters:
tears, liaise, listen. They offer some sense.
I zip my coat with no plans made.
I will bring her your old teddy next week.
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First Place
Fallen by Nancy Graham
Did you hear I was blue-lighted to the Royal,
I’ve a hole in my womb.
They pumped four pints of blood into me,
aye that was the day I met him.
I was queueing in Greggs for sausage rolls
and suddenly felt myself flood,
a terrible loosening literally
had to push my way past people
wondering if they fancied chicken
or tuna today – jesus the door wouldn’t
open, I could have wept – finally
more or less fell onto the road
where this big fella near floors me,
the look of him he’s bolting too.
The pair of us stagger in a mad embrace,
we could be dancing the tango;
he catches me as I tilt backwards,
pulling me up towards his chest.
Here love, he says, would ye do us a favour?
his eyes that dreamy Elvis blue
the soft lashes making me groan
sure isn’t it always the way,
at our lowest ebb we must
save men from their troubles,
this one on the run from some hood
or the peelers, relying on
my last fiver to make his getaway.
But for the blood spilling out of me
I’d tell him where to go
’stead of scrabbling for my purse,
slightly hampered by his arms wrapped
round me, clinging for dear life.
Dizzily I discern his flaw: a hard man
wanting affection. There we sway:
a couple heart-bound, oblivious
to the lunchtime passers-by, till
a siren wails bleakly and like that, he’s gone.
I bus it these days when I’ve shopping to get.
From the top deck,
a glimpse is not impossible.
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Fosseway Writers 