For a plain man you have fancy writing.
It announces itself on envelopes
in a fanfare of loops and curlicues.
Your letters clasp hands to dance galliards,
throw each other through the air, swooping
down lower than is strictly legible,
deeper than any teacher would have ticked.

You must have practised it under the desk
of the village school that wrote you off,
with short blunt pencils and scraps of paper
salvaged and stored in the empty inkwells,
working up rococo scripts whimsical
enough to summarise the man you prayed
you would become, just to spite them.

None of it comforts you of course. Not
your florid penmanship, nor the fact that
you are now important. The child still sits
under an alphabet frieze in cheap clothes,
tight lipped, trying to coil pot hooks into Os
of wonder and praise. You can’t get back
to tell him it worked out. None of us can.

1st Prize: £1,000



Musician
by DIANNA POOLEY

Miss Barton had the new kid from Langley’s farm
sit by himself at the window, for the spots
around his mouth were a bit of a problem she said
and on the Tuesday she came to school
with a pink lotion which made them look better.
So he wasn’t teased, but on Wednesday
after Linda Armstrong who was monitor
had seen a nit on his collar, when she leaned
across his desk to fill the inkwell,
someone wrote Lousy Len in chalk above his hat peg.
The next morning on the verandah at roll-call
Miss Barton said, as he was a musician,
he would stand at the side near the saddle rack
and play the drum, while the rest of us lined up
to do our stretches and sing ‘Advance Australia Fair’.


Son
by OCTAVIA LAMB

He is six,
hat pulled down over his ears, tied under his chin,
a grown-up’s scarf wound ten times round his neck.
It is an empty beach. He is not afraid.

The last chance for his lovely mother
to dive naked into the ice-cold Baltic Sea,
he sits on her clothes to keep the wind from whipping them away.
It is dark. He is not afraid.

She comes back in, teeth chattering,
and kisses her brave boy.
With you I could steal horses.

She nuzzles saltily against his cheek
as his chest expands.

2nd Prize: £375

All the winning and runner-up poems will be published in the JULAUGSEP issue of the magazine. To order a copy of this issue @ £5.50 phone 0191 261 6656, or subscribe