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Winner of the Hamish Canham
Poetry Prize
for the best poem to appear in
the Poetry Society
news letter 2004 (reprinted
summer 2004)
Changing Shape
Her passport describes
her
as five feet three
but that was fifty years
ago
when she was as slim
as an iris
with a river of red hair.
Now the stem of her spine
has shrunk, she barely
measures four foot ten.
Slack flesh hangs
from her manicured hands
Her lillied feet are
bunioned
and the fairytale hair
clings like white wisps
of sheep’s wool to her pink
scalp.
She is doll-like,
swathed in cardigans
layered in petticoats and
pleated skirts
and as I lift her
into the wheel chair
I feel the bud of her small
body
closing.
Denise Bennett
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last
update:
contact
and in
the
shop
...
pamphlet
collection - "American Dresses",
Flarestack
in anthologies
-
"A Place for Us", Granary Press;
"Entertaining
Angels",
Canterbury Press
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