Chris Renshaw, a retired teacher, is a member of the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society who organises our Open Poetry Competition. This poem won second prize in the 2018 Folio Competition, judged by Tamar Yoseloff.
Blades
Pinking shears
crunched her new white socks
made irregular lace
clipped the cat’s whiskers on one side only
Scissors
sheared blonde waves into sweepings
struggled through the cast on a broken leg
drew a line of crimson beading
A scalpel
sliced through muscle and fat
to malignant organ
but the hole her lover carved inside her
grew bigger and bigger –
he kept on, kept on cutting
and the breadknife she plunged
beneath his ribs
well, he had that coming.
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 