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Runner-up in Mslexia’s Women’s Poetry Competition 2005,
judge - Jo Shapcott, published in Mslexia,
26, ISSN 1473-9399

Metro Boy

 

Maybe that’s his father with the polystyrene cup

up under the nose of a woman who averts her eyes,

sighs and mouths above the violin, ‘He should be in school.’

‘Fool. Fuck you. This boy knows already how to play.’

 

Aged five or younger, Wolfgang could compose in different keys.

Trees shivered off their snow. Salzburg echoed to his chords.

Swords clattered to the floor. Wooden tops unwound.

Sound was every new thing. Leopold praised and raged.

 

Sleeping in a trailer, out of town, by the maize field,

steeled by tracks, this boy dreams in minims, quavers,

savours the black leaping notes that climb the bars.

Cars murmur nursery rhythms in his head, keeping

 

time with some vague remembered fingering. ‘Bitch,

bitch,’ his step-father shouts out to the night’s halved moon.

Soon a requiem slow dances its way into the boy’s mind,

winds the opening of train doors into the ostinato’s rhyme.

 

Stephanie Norgate

 

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poetry favourites:
Bloodaxe
SmithDoorstop
Carcanet
University of Chichester
Poetry London
Mslexia
Felicity Mara
(artist)
 

and in the shop ...
collection -
"Hidden River", Bloodaxe;

pamphlet -
"Fireclay",
Smith/Doorstop

 


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