Winning Poem 2024
The winning poem is:
I saw my dead boyfriend’s face on Instagram
By Bridgette Olamide James
I zoomed in on your face on Instagram
the spitting image of you appeared on my iPhone screen,
decades after war killed the lavender and death germinated
in the fields where we embraced, knees bare, legs entangled.
Your daughter’s photos are a medium, they bring you back to life
and we are frolicking again in my mind on an alfresco bed
of hibiscus, yellow bells and bougainvillea rusted leaves
watered by your blood bleeding into the parched soil
after the tirade of apocalyptic gunshots exterminated you.
Your offspring is radiant in a flower-power dress in holiday snapshots-
Is this home, unobliterated by the dark veil of war
cast over your past life, where the dense forest blocked out sunlight?
Your warmth penetrates through the gap in your daughter’s incisors
in her smiling selfies. Mum always said the dead live among us in their children
Your daughter inherited your high cheekbones. We built castles on them.
Mum warned, hang your dreams on the chandelier, so they stay bright.
We kissed under the ceiling it dangled from letting off fireworks
before mother emitted a scorching flame extinguishing the flickering hope
you had of lending me your surname. Yours was crossed out
because your family prayed to the East, mine drank the Holy Communion
and mum said names like James belonged to apostles in the Bible.
So, she slapped your cheek right on your tribal mark leaving the scar
I have it nursed in my heart because in the rebel stampede
when you lost a limb, I couldn’t soothe your wounds with the lip balm
on your daughter’s lips in her online collage. Yours locked with mine
in the privacy of a rose bush before mum’s car engine drove you into the woods.
Your daughter’s portraits pour iodine on a fresh cut. She wears a septum ring
like female deities in my tribe. Mum says the dead gallop on horses
in our forests as an army of guardian angels to keep us alive.
Your child’s pseudonym is Divine: A filter floats above her profile picture.
A cherubim glows around her- an aura. Her bio reads, Made in Freetown
raised in Florida. You and your kin belong among sweet flora and fauna.
To plant your seeds, I send her an imaginary friend request
so, I could grow aphrodisiac flowers in your memory, in my dreams.
Other shortlisted poems are:
The Curse
by Robert Bines-Black
Venice kissed me at the campsite by the river.
It was a Judas kiss; blood sucked
out at the mosquitoes’ last supper,
Meticulous disciples feasting on me.
Those proboscis kisses. The Curse was hidden
in the sap of their saliva.
It chased me all round northern Italy,
Catching up with me on Viale Gran Sasso, Milano, at a hostel I had booked
but which didn’t exist. We flitted down the little streets,
my friend and I, hypervigilant of every hazard,
determined to outrun the Curse like prima ballerinas
tiptoeing into Dante’s Inferno.
When we arrived at our emergency hotel,
I tried to shower off the dirt stuck to my skin,
shake off the Venetian dredge like the Trevi doves,
exorcise the growing foreboding wrapping its wing around us.
The next day, my friend, walking barefoot on the lawns,
found herself chased by some old fiend shouting
blasphemy; his intentions didn’t need translating. She cried
on my shoulder in the hotel room with the blinds pulled shut.
We were alone and we felt every inch of it.
The Curse perfumed the room,
A heady toxic scent silently diffused,
planning our next move for us.
Wallets disappeared; people went missing.
In Florence every time we met a man
We turned around to find him gone. We walked up the 463 stairs
of the Duomo; counted double that on our descent.
I don’t remember anything of Pompeii. Shouldn’t I?
Trains broke down,
Turin seemed entirely out of reach,
Naples scared us. We left in tatters,
round red bumps still on my punctured skin.
I scratched the whole way home,
kissed my swollen knees.
We waved the Curse goodbye over the Med
through sleepy altitudinal tears,
blew kisses to the fishes, wrapped our hands into a fist
And threw the Curse to drown it.
Memoirs d’une jeune fille rangée
by Anna Whyatt
I have done all my wintering now.
Last spring, I emerged.
Skin thin as paper, an aurora borealis of scars.
A veritable last word.
A walking stripe.
An apple, laid up, withered and brown.
Dragging my heels for sorrow.
My heart aching at the drop of a hat.
Long hauled bone,
flesh bruised blue as a shuttered heart
floating among landfalls.
Between night and morning, a shadow, lingering.
Searching a reason to be.
Trying to hold sand, against a wall of fire.
Eyes listening where there were only tears.
O how these night reaches stalk my days.
Now I sit, the queen, shifting my feet, a mind like ice.
Nettled, my fingers weaving yet another coat.
They will return soon, the swans,
Blacking a sky still dark with fires.
I go out to meet them.
Hugging my soul in a retreat of women.
Stargazers, we shift our feet.
Demented, we weary, weary our dead.
That is no country for old men.
They are dead themselves that live there.
I cast the coats over wings
starless and still.
And in time learn that sleeping is not death.
Except to those who mourn.
Autopsy of a broken teacup
by Marissa Chalmers
Hundreds of tiny shards, shattered
all sharp edges, begging for blood at a touch
scattered across the floor in a very particular order
to tell of the fall; the catalyst that caused the wreckage.
Was it accidental?
An unintentional tip of the saucer.
A careless act, where care should have been taken.
Was it done in anger?
Thrown to release a rage.
To make a point, a punctuation mark with red-marked white porcelain.
Was it dropped in despair?
The physical manifestation of invisible emotion.
The release of the handle like the release of hope.
Does it even matter, really, how it shattered?
Will it make a difference to count every bit it broke into;
will it ever be enough, any amount of glue,
to put every piece back into place.
Unless perhaps the glue could be gold…
could make shine the sharpest edge, and gaps would glow.
Replacing the mislaid and missing bits with better elements,
strong enough to hold it all together.
To hold its purpose, liquid essence of existence.
So refilled and lined with light, would the Teacup say thank you?
To the rushing mother,
never enough
time for tea,
anyways…
To the screaming child
finding herself
finding Mama’s kiss on a cup
instead of her check.
To the fading woman,
done with living
the lie of a false mantra
“it’s going to be ok”.
Now does it matter, really, how it shattered?
How many bits between golden scars will be recounted,
every time it’s taken out and filled with tea,
held by hands steadier now, hearing thirsty lips whisper
kintsugi.
Selfish Poem – by Alice Brooker
somewhere / a bomb explodes / leaving / my coffee undisturbed / leaving ruins / and here / a family collapses / leaving me / sat / fat / studying its etymology / meaning / a group of people / under / the same roof / leaving me stupid / unravelling / my unrelation / my border / my brain / making boundaries / out / of surface / of surface level space / here / a bomb explodes / leaving me / with search results / war turns into repetitions / I absorb / “conflict” / like I care / like if etymology / of family / was as narrow / as blood / as removed as latin / which taught
a family can be connected through a school of thought
meaning / any believer / in humanity / should not be reading / etymology / the truth / is suffering / within / the body
Helen Cox
Competition Judge : Writer and Coach
Helen Cox is a Yorkshire-born novelist and poet with an MA in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of York St John. Helen has produced two poetry pamphlets and has had individual poems published in Popshot Magazine, Riggwelter, Visual Verse, Pop the Culture Pill and the TL;DR Women’s Anthology, among many others. She frequently runs online poetry workshops that are free to no income and low income poets and runs an annual masterclass for advanced writers in the craft. Helen also hosts The Poetrygram Podcast.
