Third Place Winner, June 2003 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Third Place Winner, June 2003

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.”