ALLISON MCVETY is the winner of this year’s National Poetry Competition

donations will be very gratefully received.

COMPS & CALLS –

19 May: Virginia Warbey; 31 May: Frogmore
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Ariadne’s Thread

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Shortlands Poetry Circle

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Comp results:

Virginia Warbey 2011
Frogmore 2011
Ware 2011
Swale Life Poetry Competition, 2012

featured poet: Valerie Bridge

waiting room

Again light slides its beads through these three windows,
seeps inside these white beds, flits along the drips,
slots into tubes, alights on Sister’s smile, bedpans
and broomsticks, lands on Olga’s specs, blinds her eyes,
fingers her prayered hands, hoops the loop overhead,
disconnects. From the waiting room, Baba Yaga creeps in, hides.

Maybe Olga’s questions somersault the rails; she’s wondering,
has Konrad watered the cucumbers, told their son about the blue arrow
on her left breast, pointing to an x. She takes out four needles,
the pattern she’s picked at Rosina’s news, she’s waited so long,
and sees an image of baby’s face. The salt and bread: the Priest.

She counts stitches, unravels hours. Baba Yaga’s a shadow
dealing cards, tangling yarn, observing a visitor trailing sweetpeas
and dangling keys, nurses watching time passing the clock.
Next door, a drip drapes the ‘Hospital Waste’ bin. Baba nods
the night in. Staff strobe the dark with torches splitting dreams
that drift as dust between three pills, a beaker of water,
and someone shouting, ‘I told you, switch off that light.’

Baba grins: the Three of Spades. She puts it on the Queen,
promising, ‘Saint John’s Eve, by midnight’ with breath so hot,
Olga throws off her sheet; this time her feet will reach the floor.

By the screen, Baba smirks, binding time, shuttling cards,
knotting yarn; waits for daylight to bring Konrad to her.

Note: Baba Yaga: fate, a witch, in Russian folklore