| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
THE CHEWER
Judy Goodwin
(South Carolina Writers Workshop)
“You deliberately eat that
to bother me.” Suddenly cruel
I sit accused,
one apple half gone in my hand,
one poisonous piece
a slug against my teeth.
In the kitchen glass
I can see myself perched
gargoyle-like, I don’t recognize the shadow
of my hunch. I take the next bite
quietly, use my tongue to press
each macintosh cell to mush,
suck and roll
and push it down
my throat half closed, unwilling.
Stubborn tube. I give up,
set the fruit on a plate.
Let the fruit flies have it
I say. Let the fruit flies
take silent bites, land and lift
and land. Let the plate
be a silent tongue.
Judge Sarah Crown’s comments: “As with all my favourite poems, this says little and speaks volumes. Through the poet’s painfully clear description of a single incident, I was given a picture of a whole relationship, a lesson in the depths of feeling that lie behind silence. The profound impact of the opening statement on the speaker is there in the litany of ugly adjectives with which she describes her – I decided it was ‘her’ – reaction: the apple is ‘poisonous’ (Snow White, anyone?), the piece in her mouth is a ‘slug,’ her shadow perches ‘gargoyle-like,’ unrecognisable even to herself. The lines on her struggle to swallow the apple noiselessly are masterful, full of sticky, clogging half-rhymes – ‘mush,’ ‘suck,’ ‘push’ – and the lack of punctuation makes it impossible for us to tell whether it is her throat that’s ‘half closed, unwilling,’ or she herself. In contrast with the oppressive silence of the first section of the poem, the final declarative lines sing out freely, with great power. The plate and the flies may be silent but, it seems, she’s no longer going to be. Wonderful stuff.”
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
2nd Place Winner, September 2005
