Competition Tessa Castro

IN COMPETITION No 214 you were invited to write a poem called ‘Toast’, which was recently added to the list of dangerous foods. Charmaine Brown’s poetic hero slipped on the butter, proving the health risk. There was a fair bit of word-play on toast in the sense of brown-bread, as the Cockney rhyming slangsters put it. Francis Roads’s toast-fancier roared for toast in a Bellocian way after walking from the Pentland Firth. Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Chambers Biographical Dictionary, full of toasts of many towns, going to Bob Drought, whose picture of love-ended overcame my usual aversion to free-form poetry.

‘Just toast,’ your crisp demand, but I In love give choices still; croissant?

wholemeal? crusty white? ‘Just toast’ for you absorbed in painting

on your new day face. One token bite then plate and me are

pushed aside. Just toast, left cold. It was an awkward Last farewell, a clumsy end, I’m left for

dead. No hearty breakfast meal for me, the man

condemned, No final kiss now love like you has gone. The debris cleared. Wet finger wipes the

honey, Butter, jam from slicing knife. Your toast now limp, abandoned coffee

barely warm. In pain I rip your toast to shreds Then hurl it on the garage roof. The cocky starlings watch you go; they

wait and when The toast rains down they strut and peck

around my gift, A feast for them, just crumbs for me. Bob Drought

Though salmonella lurks in uncooked

fowls And pesticides taint foods from coast to

coast What really starts the rot inside your

bowels Is toast.

Be careful how you treat those tempting

slices – A Simon Cowell-like browning at the most – Or risk that scourge, as all the best

advice is, Burnt toast. Acrylamide’s a black and deadly threat Which those concerned with health are

right to post. If you ignore their warning, they regret You’re toast. Jerome Betts

St Lawrence came from Roman Spain, A friend unto the poor, But to Valerian a pain Who flouted Roman law.

The greedy Emperor went spare, A bad man to offend, But Lawrence had the strength to bear A Christian martyr’s end.

They roasted him upon a grill Until the Deacon cried, ‘Please turn me over, if you will. I’m done enough this side.’

His torturers obliged, till he Was burnt as Mother’s toast – Though this engaging tale may be A pious myth, at most. Basil Ransome-davies

This was our tea-time skill on Saturdays: the coals just so, that dense insistent red and hollowed out with heat, the grate’s

black glaze an almost-shimmer, and a slice of bread speared on the angled toasting fork, its thick and knife-ridged surface held as near the

fire as hands and gleaming face could bear

– the trick was perfect browning, not a smoking pyre. The crumb and deckle edge might crisp

to black; the loaf’s inherent sweetness stayed the

same, and comforting. We never used a rack but ate it hot, fast-buttered, as it came and took for granted toast would always be made on a fork, with fire, in time for tea. D A Prince

Competition No 216

Our annual bouts-rimés. Please use the following rhymes in the order given to write a fourteen-line poem on the subject of your choice: appoint, race, pace, point, unjoint, space, face, joint, flight, dwell, right, hell, evil, devil. Entries, by post (The Oldie, Moray House, 23/31 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7PA) or email (comps@theoldie.co.uk – don’t forget to include your postal address), to ‘Competition No 216’ by 26th May 2017.