| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
MEETING A FORMER TEACHER
Tara Chapple
(Rule 9/Fast Forward)
I have let myself go,
ballooning, I drag my new
intellect in tow
like a cross child. I see She is
as thin as ever, plucking strings
of a narrow-necked guitar
with articulate fingers,
fast like wires cut whilst live,
stopping only to sip green tea
as our conversation lurches
like my rosè wine, full-bodied-
red, if angled slightly.
I do not remember her being
far too grandiose for me
but I see there is
still common ground:
we wring our hands secretly
at the slack soft belly of
a spider in the grass.
Judge Claire Hero’s comment: “I love the terseness and tension in the language of this poem, especially in the first two stanzas, where the speaker and former teacher are meeting again. The ‘articulate fingers’ on the guitar seems an apt expression. And yet the end provides a hint of mystery and surprises me. It seems an Emily Dickinson moment, one I quite like.”
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
Honorable Mentions, June 2003
