Competition
TESSA CASTRO
IN COMPETITION No 251, you were invited to write a poem called Wrapping Up. Fay Dickinson’s eco-friendly re-user of wrapping paper noted that ‘Tape leaves no marks on foil paper / If removed with care, / And tissue sheets are reusable / Although easy to tear.’ Stan Bloxham wrote of wrapping, for a museum, a Victorian carving knife once used to cut a thin slice for each member of a large family. Tom Marvin’s narrator was the wealthy bubble-wrap king, sleeping on a bed of bubble wrap and dreaming of bubble wrap. Commiserations to these and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the well-wrapped bonus prize of The Chambers Dictionary of Great Quotations going to Dorothy Pope.
Oh pretty charismatic boy, so long It took me to see through your charming ways. The scales fell only slowly from my eyes. Till recently I could see nothing wrong In you, financed you willingly, headstrong, Ignored advice, mistook your tactic eyes For what I wanted there to be – not wise Nor practised in deceit – my life a song. But then when I was helpless, needing friends, You cancelled our arrangements for ten weeks. My injuries then healed, your emailed words, a lash, Suggested lunch (of course at my expense). Throughout the meal, I studied your techniques And counted the embedded hints for cash. Dorothy Pope
I sit, enveloped and cocooned in this upholstered chair. I was born and, seconds old, was wrapped. I wonder where That cloth is now, that touched me after blood and hands and air? Wrapped up warm I grew, wrapped up in cloth and love and prayer. Through past and present clothing I meander as I sit, From nappy’s starched and binding folds to work suit’s tailored fit, School uniform and party frock, cloth hated, cloth adored, The wedding dress, the funeral veil, time-wrapped and tissue-stored.
The bathtime towel, the bedtime gown, the duvet, blanket, sheet, The mittens on my playground hands, the socks on ageing feet. The bandage and the plaster, the pad, the sling, the cast Wrapped, birth to death, from swaddling to shroud, from first to last. Few allowed so intimate as cloth, and few would dare, But doctor, lover, undertaker, water, self and air… Rapt in thought I sit, among the wheelchaired, rug-robed laps And know that all the thinking in the room is under wraps. Jane Bower
There was no top table – masters ate with the boys, To stimulate intelligent conversation. ‘I knew a boy, once,’ said the Head, ‘who seemed To relish being kicked. We called him Corkarse.’
This from a man who’d dined with Gandhi, banned All forms of corporal punishment on his appointment. The ensuing silence, studied if not stunned, appeared To flummox him. Who it was that finally coughed,
And changed the subject, I do not recall, but I believe, With hindsight, that he was possibly attempting To draw out the bully sitting on his left. But QueerFellow, the other side of him, like all the rest of us –
Like Corkarse, probably – knew when to keep shtum. Bill Holloway
COMPETITION No 253 Time for the ever popular annual bouts-rimés. Please write a poem with these words in this order as the rhymes: bare, peace, cease, stare, nowhere, geese, release, air, day, shone, alone, they, away, stone. Entries, by post (The Oldie, Moray House, 23/31 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7PA) or e-mail (comps@theoldie.co.uk – don’t forget to include your postal address), to ‘Competition No 253’ by 2nd April.
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