In second place for the Open Competition is Sharon Black’s winning poem: My headband has eleven moth holes.
My headband has eleven moth holes
the one I use for holding back my hair
when face-washing, teeth-brushing:
knitted grey, twin red rims, hanging
on the bathroom window handle
instead of on the hook you fixed up
to keep it out the way. This morning
before my contacts are in place
I examine it close up,
can’t believe my naked eyes:
eleven holes, flagrant, neatly spaced
all the way round as if the moth
had an aesthetic bent, a sense of symmetry.
I’ve never seen a moth in the bathroom.
I’ve never spotted a single hole.
I shake my head in disbelief, climb
the steps to the lounge, the kitchen,
past your socks on the floor,
still pondering the moth holes,
how many other mysteries
are lying in wait, how many creatures
have been nibbling at ordinary things,
removing them in increments
with such stealth I don’t notice
their disappearance from my life,
before I even join you at the table.
Sharon Black is from Glasgow and lives in a remote valley of the Cévennes mountains. In 2025 she won The Poetry Society’s inaugural Tobias Hill Prize, the Kent & Sussex Open, and the Wells Open poetry competitions. Her fifth full collection will be published in May 2026. She is editor of Pindrop Press. www.sharonblack.co.uk
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 