Prizewinning Poems

FIRST PRIZE

The Flowers of Madagascar by Anthony Lawrence

I pulled over in a wave of heat where he'd made a shelter
from strips of bark and a map like fold-out insulation.
As we drove into the sun, he said he'd been waiting
for a ride since dawn. I forget his name. His body had

a smell that troubled definition. I could summon
the after-rain scent of a horse just in from working
with cattle, or wheat sheaves stacked in bristling lines.
His name might have been Edwin or Colin. Whenever

he spoke, he tapped his front teeth with a fingernail.
By the time we reached the turn-off to the salt flats
I learned he'd been working as an emergency doctor
in Washington, where gunshot wounds were common.

When he said the word wound, sunlight sparked off
the callipers of downed wires either side of the road.
When the air conditioner rattled and died, I pulled over
to show him the raptor frames conservationists

had bolted to the tops of telegraph poles. As he stood
looking into the silent explosion of a nest, he began
intoning the names of resident eagles and hawks
on Chesapeake Bay, then paused to say the only time

he'd been in love was with an ornithologist who had
held his hand as she traced the outline of his thumb
and told him it was over. Over he said, as though
signing off on a handset. His name sounded like Orrin.

He spoke softly, about unusual things, like how to make
negroni cocktails using blood oranges and splinters
of vanilla bean. He explained that drinking his version
while listening to Van Morrison's No Guru, No Method                        

No Teacher could lead to a welcome form of catatonia.
Are you a religious man? he asked, as we drove under
a sign printed with KING WAVES KILL. A tsunami
warning siren crossed with a shark alarm began

in the shore break of my head and got louder the longer
I took to answer. Where the ocean meets limestone
as capped breaker or the low-fi turn of the tide, he did
not mention God. Instead, he went to the ragged edge

of the cliff to where a gull was holding its position
in upwellings of wind. When I joined him, he said I swear
I can smell the flowers of Madagascar. The gull angled away.
A wave stood up on the reef and broke over us.

SECOND PRIZE:Jenga Blocks by Natalie Whittaker

THIRD PRIZE:

Fuck / Sunflowers by Inua Ellams

FOURTH PRIZES:

Pilgrims by Judy o’Kane

They’d been on the road
for weeks when they passed, pilgrims
tooting high-pitched horns, hanging out windows,
waving from white vans festooned with flowers, like wedding cakes

on wheels.
The boatman lit
incense and we drifted
in its wake, past men shaving

in slow,
deliberate movements.
At the temple, couples set their firstborn
into brass scales, fed their first solid food into

O
shaped mouths. 
On Christmas morning we climbed into canoes
that carried us into birdsong; we followed footprints that came to nothing.

Rapid Water Treading by Elvire Roberts

grebe bubbles through water
grebe is bubbly and grievously so
wears greaves on grebe legs black
greaves like a sexton a soldier tho
grebe is not serious not grimful
not po grebe is grebeful which is
plashful is panacheful is grebe
groove grebe dance grebe preen
reardash grebe do headyshake
grebe fluff tuftyruff grebe skim 
and dip and duck and suck for
weed is grebes side dish but grebe
loves to fish and fish love to grebe
because grebing is diving and jiving
and flapping of fins in tangos thats
twogoes tight between stones
now to grebe is a verb in hubburble
of fishlish where grebesent is joy
in a muddyful moment and mud is
grebesome delight is the matter of
grebery and so grebe and grebe on
into grebous night while grebe and
herringsue dive down to fishdelish
shlishlip shlub hubber hslush hlup

Dead Man’s Fingers by Graham Burchell

(Decaisnea insignis, Dead Man’s Fingers, growing in the University of Oxford Botanic Garden.)

but some may see moth pupae, bunched, bloated,
apposite in shades of twilight blue: faux-leather amnia,
guardians of the secrets of inner process
and their gluten cushions working a spell
to summon antennae, proboscises
and compound eyes.
                                      Hideous beauty
from body-bags of self-digestion, imaginal discs
in which may lurk the plan for wing pattern,
that mimicry of woodland shadow, bark,
shed corners or chapel-stone ghosts.

Given seasons, the chinsed seams would crack.
Some base need should push the oakum out,
break open these follicles like purses to reveal
black flagella legs coming, and heads still hair-gel wet,
wary with feathered probes to taste the air?  First taste.
                           First clawed-grip on the outer casing,
one hoisting itself. First uncertainty about breeze,
        the universe and that springboard sway.

The Natural History of Fireflies by Pamela Job