The theme of this year’s contest was “Home Port,” in connection with the forthcoming International Lawrence Durrell Society Conference in Vancouver in 2026.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n There Do not listen to the propaganda abroad, The island rises through purple ash tilts like a top as the young pilot sings And at once we\u2019re on the runway From steaming concrete I move indoors Alone in line, papers in hand, guns exploding I tell them I\u2019m a writer. The guard\u2019s eyes scan me: * * *<\/p>\n The jungle breathes. The iguana in the tree The mongoose cracks eggs on a rock in the grass, while far out at sea, flying fish leap * * *<\/p>\n At last I find a taxi that will take me to the house. and we enter the jungle at roller-coaster speed, A small ache throbs in one of my teeth: I erupt, snorting at the image I see: from Grand Anse to L\u2019Anse aux \u00c9pines!<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n The goat-air is stifling. I suck it in, of sleeping marble sheep—headlights stabbing Icy waterfalls crash down beside us The house peeks out from a hillside monsoon * * *<\/p>\n You appear in the doorway hauling dasheen. You sprawl on the chaise. from the veins of each giant leaf Pitchers of soursop. Wine-ripe mangos. I am that other life but as I reach for you now, Moonbeams creep * * *<\/p>\n In dappled amber light, we wake up to find And the salt fluffs up A uniformed guard You rub clove oil on my tooth; A sudden rushing in the trees: The rifle fire was deafening, then That night we fled. helped me…the water Spasming curls of seahorse tails My arms around you tight, my hands You said:<\/p>\n What is to is must is.<\/em><\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n The guard\u2019s eyes scanned me: I ran. In my mind I ran. Stood still as a broom, (just a game)<\/em><\/p>\n and when at last, years later, still burning for you, \u201cIt was clear that the pawns were all men, The lingering echoes of AK-47s RADIO NEWSFLASH:<\/em><\/p>\n Mrs. Finton-Smith\u2019s four good hens House of mahogany, frangipani, And now you lie in peace beneath palaces of sky, Prisoner of Paradise, your beauty \u2014 Gabrielle LeMay<\/p>\n In this poem, I describe an imagined experience on the Caribbean Island of Grenada during an equally imagined span of time that telescopes the March 1979 left-wing coup with the October 1983 U.S. invasion. I did spend one week in Grenada in April 1979 (under martial law, shortly after the coup) as well as two weeks in December 1979\/January 1980. While there, I fell in love with the island and with one very special young man\u2014and my memories led to this writing.<\/p>\n The 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada was preceded more than two years earlier by a mock invasion staged on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. In these \u201cwar games,\u201d Grenada\u2019s code name was \u201cAmber.\u201d While Derek Walcott\u2019s image of \u201ca landscape locked in amber\u201d in the epigraph is most likely coincidental, it is interesting because this Saint Lucian poet did spend time living and teaching in Grenada.<\/p>\n In April 1979, shortly before my first visit to Grenada, La Soufri\u00e8re volcano on nearby Saint Vincent erupted violently, creating a dense fog of purplish ash that my small LIAT plane had difficulty navigating through.<\/p>\n Leaping off a cliff into the sea to escape hostile forces is deeply embedded in Grenada\u2019s history. When Grenada was taken over by the French in 1650, a group of Carib inhabitants, rather than surrender, fled to a cliff at the north end of the island and leaped to their deaths. Later, the cliff was named \u201cLe Morne des Sauteurs\u201d (\u201cThe Hill of Leapers\u201d), and the town that evolved at that location became known as Sauteurs.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is to is must is\u201d is probably of local or regional origin. It is a way of saying \u201cWhatever will be, will be,\u201d or \u201cQue sera, sera.\u201d<\/p>\n The quote from Derek Walcott\u2019s \u201cAnother Life\u201d can be found in Derek Walcott: Collected Poems 1948-1984. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986, page 145.<\/p>\n The slogan as quoted by Maurice Bishop can be found in Forward Ever! Three Years of the Grenadian Revolution: Speeches of Maurice Bishop. Sydney, Australia: Pathfinder Press, 1982, page 126. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gabrielle (Gaby) LeMay is a former New-York-based horse trainer\/riding instructor and medical advertising copywriter. For many years, she split her time between the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the wilds of the upstate countryside. Two vacations in Grenada during the 1979 leftist revolution were life-changing; she began trying to write about her experiences there, and ultimately turned to poetry workshops for help.<\/p>\n “On the Runway with Guns” evolved over many years. While working toward an MFA in poetry at Hunter College (1999-2001), the poem grew to 24 pages before serious cutting began; other poems were created from the cuttings. Her first collection, Pandora’s Barn<\/em> (which did not include Grenada poems), won the 2004 Tennessee Chapbook Prize. Other poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Confrontation<\/em>, Passager<\/em>, Paterson Literary Review<\/em>, Poetry East<\/em>, Poetry London<\/em>, Rattapallax<\/em>, Spillway<\/em>, and the Wild Gods<\/em> anthology from New Rivers Press. Her poem “Child of War’ won First Prize in the 2023 White Mice Poetry Competition, and appears on our website.<\/p>\n After moving to California in 2008, Gaby became active in the Ventura County poetry world, teaching with California Poets in the Schools and coaching high school students for the annual Poetry Out Loud competitions. She is now at work on a collection of poems concerning her life with horses, and is trying to master J.S. Bach’s Toccata in E minor<\/em>, BWV 914, on her gracefully aging Baldwin grand.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Sow stands peg leg in mud, dugs drooping, Penelope is almost always shown sitting down The radiologist hardly regards me And we\u2019re all waiting for some man or other. \u2014 Jane Maltby<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When it became clear the children had left home, and the proper job was ending, and she really should have more time now, Jane turned to poetry. She’s been writing all her life, as a journalist and communications consultant. She enjoys both the walking and the wines of the South East of England, where she lives. She’s also a listening volunteer for the Samaritans and advises on comms for the region, which involves creating more PowerPoint packs than you might think. <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n First we steal a boat.<\/p>\n Sculled out from bedlam, Launched at low dip by the To free this endless kink to leave At last at sea, pulling wild and rogue, It\u2019s not always easy this stealing of boats.<\/p>\n Congealed in houses they\u2019ll cry down still, \u2014 Judymay Murphy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Judymay Murphy has been garnering the interest of the classical music and academic communities with what she terms her Neometrical Poetry—with its emphasis on precise syllabics, intricate rhyme networks, patterned stanzas, and structural elegance. Murphy’s work favours an emphasis on universal, affective rhetoric and deliberative discourse, poetry that causes people to take different action than they otherwise might.<\/p>\n The style is reminiscent of former historical eras but through the filter of modern and postmodern forms. <\/p>\n Judymay performs as a headline act around Europe and (until this year) in the USA on large stages, anything from 300 people at Busboys & Poets in DC to 1,200 at Oscars Theatre in Stockholm. Since 2019 she’s been the poet for the Dreamland UNICEF Galas with Stradivari violinist Yury Revich. <\/p>\n In the past year she has headlined at MAK in Vienna, Spoken Word Paris, Koko in Camden, London and St. John’s in Waterloo, London (along with William Orbit and Rupert Everett). <\/p>\n This summer will be her first time performing her work in Canada. This is particularly exciting to Judymay as her maternal grandmother lived in Calgary for most of her adult life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n My grandmother speaks in scale- it\u2019s vital to starve binds the heart memories’ murmuring pull. \u2014 Jeremy Pak\u00a0Nelson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jeremy Pak Nelson is a writer and artist from Hong Kong. Based in Manchester, UK, he holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and was part of the Poets of Colour Incubator program. His climate fiction has been selected as a Grist: Imagine 2200 Editor\u2019s Pick, and he was writer-in-residence at the UK Space Conference 2025. His preoccupations include outdated methods of putting words on paper, folk fiddle, and the game of go. He can be found at jpaknelson.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Inside our four bed suburban semi To the South, two houses To the North, is the river whose level To the East are boarded up developments, To the West is the pub \u2013 also the Quarry Above, House Martins rest in the gutters.<\/p>\n Below, the diggered willow pushes back up.<\/p>\n Outside, the cracks slowly grow. Coming through me is this is the place for us, \u2014 Cat Brogan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cat Brogan is a poet and spoken word artist from Northern Ireland. Her work explores queerness, care, place, and the strange intimacies of family life, often blending lyric tenderness with wit and performance energy. She is the 2024 Ulster Poetry Slam Champion and a BBC Edinburgh Fringe Poetry Slam winner and has represented Dublin at UNESCO\u2019s Slamovision. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Skylight 47, The Martello Journal<\/em>, Apricot<\/em>, Anthropocene<\/em>, Ragaire<\/em>, Dedalus Press (Local Wonders<\/em>), and Boshemia Magazine<\/em>. Alongside her writing, she works as a facilitator and educator, supporting communities to find their voices through poetry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n She gets up early to see the eclipse, fills the humidifier I\u2019ve been saving for the right lover. Her muscles whimper, to bury a body is inside another body. I know that the thing I am constantly performing for her the story of everyone if she is judging me, or just quiet, but she still keeps the smallest the back door open for me to walk out of my life and into hers. I shiver, like twenty rabbits crammed in the broken jaw of my life into the corner of her mouth, catching a glimpse her face, preemptively dreaming of falling into her arms. \u2014 Stephanie Saywell<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Stephanie Saywell (she\/her) is a NYC-based poet, performer, and choreographer. She holds a Certificate of Completion from the Dell’ Arte International School of Physical Theatre’s Professional Training Program, plus a BA in Dance and a BA in Written Arts from Bard College. Saywell has studied poetry under the tutelage of Buddy Wakefield, Megan Falley, Ann Lauterbach, and Michael Ives, and short fiction under Paul LaFarge. She is a Teaching Assistant for Writers Anonymous, a poetry workshop led by Buddy Wakefield. Her writing has been published by Muzzle Magazine, The Missouri Review, Soundings East, Palette Poetry, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Ink & Letters. She is the 2025 recipient of the Claire Keyes Poetry Award, judged by Shangyang Fang.\u00a0www.stephaniesaywell.com<\/a><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n I do not recognise I drove here I never intended to finish and now I find myself home become this place by learn cormorant, seagull, seal \u2014 Helen Smith<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Helen Smith is an autistic librarian from the Welsh Marches, currently living on the northeast coast of Scotland. With a background in zoology and psychology, she finds inspiration in folklore, deep ecology, and the relationships between humans and wild nature. She is co-editor of the poetry broadside barbara<\/a><\/em> and enjoys the physicality of assembling each edition with typewriters, glue sticks, and a photocopier. When not delightfully lost in the woods, she may be found at helensmithwrites.com<\/a>.<\/p>\nFirst Place (tie)<\/h2>\n
On the Runway with Guns<\/h3>\n
\n\twas your heaven! The clear
\n\tglaze of another life,
\n\ta landscape locked in amber, the rare
\n\tgleam…
\n—Derek Walcott, Another Life<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
\n\tcome and see for yourself.
\n—Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister
of Grenada, 1979-1983<\/span><\/p>\nArrivals<\/h4>\n
\nspat out in a fog of acrid gas
\nfrom Soufri\u00e8re\u2019s fiery mouth.
\nMy chunky blue plane<\/p>\n
\nlanding commands to himself:
\nhe cannot see where sea meets runway,
\nbut guesses well.<\/p>\n
\nwith guns—real ones: cold, loaded, aimed at our plane
\nby soldiers on the roof of the customs house.
\nShocked—stumbling—I get out.<\/p>\n
\ninto glaring yellow bulb light;
\nthe immigration line takes an hour to move
\nand I\u2019m the only one on it.<\/p>\n
\nin my mind—I dodge fat flies shiny as eyes
\nbuzzing like a city over gunny sacks and crates
\nstuffed with mail, chickens, cigarettes, rice.<\/p>\n
\nThey ask what kind.
\n\u201cGame-rules writer, here to just play.\u201d
\n\u201cWar games, perhaps? Wait here a moment,\u201d they say…<\/p>\n
\nWhat is your identity?
\nMay I read your eyes?
\nDo you breathe?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nswings his tail slowly.<\/p>\n
\nthe grackle sips rum from the edge of a glass,<\/p>\n
\nlike hearts, calling to me…<\/p>\n
\nI strap myself in and hold tight to the loop.
\nThe driver throws the car into herky-jerky gear<\/p>\n
\ncareen over hillocks of streaming jade,
\nthe lavender horizon framing stark new clarities…<\/p>\n
\nthe driver says that I shouldn\u2019t worry—
\na good Cuban dentist lives near the beach.<\/p>\n
\nRicky Ricardo howling \u201cBabalu,\u201d
\nchasing me down with a huge tooth drill<\/p>\n
\nswoon, am taken. We snake
\nthrough shadows till blankets of stars
\nflash their shattered windshields high up above us;
\nbreathless, we speed past resplendent tableaux<\/p>\n
\nat crimson poinsettias, bursting cups of gold,
\ntubes of thick honey crawling up the trees.
\nThe windows wide open.
\nMy hair in my eyes.<\/p>\n
\nin quicksilver walls—foil beaten
\ninto molten decibels—clear, pure song
\nshowering the blossoms and dozing white oxen
\nwith verdigris patinas and treefrog sonatinas.<\/p>\n
\nof bloody bougainvillea, dark as a womb.
\nIn the cool back room I fall deep asleep
\nand sleep until the crushed-velvet voice of this place
\nenters me, and it is you.<\/p>\n
\nLaughing, I pull you into lantern light,
\nout of the curtains of rain.<\/p>\n
\nI curl at your feet.
\nTogether we peel the toxic skin<\/p>\n
\nwe\u2019ll need to boil for hours
\nto make callaloo.<\/p>\n
\nPure food to cry for, and we do.
\nThis is your kingdom, and I love you.<\/p>\n
\nyou would seize and enter,
\nbash down the door and rush blindly in
\nto conquer the republic of my past;<\/p>\n
\nyou merely bend down to my wrist\u2019s raised veins
\nglowing green through translucent skin,
\ntouch your lips to them.<\/p>\n
\nlike fingers through the room. Locked
\nto each other like starfish,
\nwe gape and drown.<\/p>\n
\na goat curled up on the foot of the bed,
\ntwitchtail lizards on the kitchen wall,
\na fat toad burping in the sink.
\nOur hair stands on end.<\/p>\n
\nout of the rusty shaker top:
\ntoo much humidity here.<\/p>\n
\nshuffles around the yard,
\npoking his shotgun through matted grass,
\nlooking for American coins
\nor the butt of last night\u2019s cigar.<\/p>\n
\nthe pain begins to fade. I slice
\npawpaw and star fruit into a plate…<\/p>\n
\nBullets spring through the yard like fleas—<\/em><\/p>\nDepartures<\/h4>\n
\nclean air, no sound—then some returned:
\ngusts in dry leaves, small animals in weeds—
\nquick gasps in shadows—then nothing.<\/p>\n
\nRaced in darkness to the cliff at Sauteurs
\nwhere we arced and leapt—dove side by side
\ninto massive breakers rolling in fast
\nto smash against the rockface behind us…
\nand then the frozen darkness, the weightlessness—
\nand then your arms and legs around me teaching me
\nto open to the sea…you held me down and<\/p>\n
\ncame in harsh and silver-cold; you made me
\nbreathe it deeply in—it slammed
\ndown, jammed in my caught
\nscream—<\/p>\n
\nsnagged my thick hair, dragged me down;
\nflittery moonlit gem-studded fishes
\nstreaked all around; you made me
\nwait, hold the water in—make
\nit happen:<\/em><\/p>\n
\nopen, searching,
\nI found the oozing gouges,
\nthe raw, torn flesh releasing hot, sticky gouts
\nwhere horsewhips had slashed
\nyour great-great grandfather\u2019s back
\nin the dark, pitching ship;
\nlater, in barred stone cells, he and his brothers
\nwere chained to each other, bolted to the walls
\nin numb concatenation—whipped, beaten
\ninto stunned, desperate
\npretense of submission—
\nblack world of pain without end—<\/p>\n
\nWhat is your identity?
\nMay I read your eyes?
\nDo you breathe?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nrunning through the implications, a brisk breeze
\nof certainties: I moved forward
\nresolutely through the customs building,
\nstood on line, swatted flies, averted my eyes.
\nWas searched for contraband, dark
\nhands all over me<\/p>\n
\nI dove back in with my rule-writer\u2019s pen
\nin my fist, nothing made sense:<\/p>\n
\n\tmoving forward readily, smiling guardedly.
\n\t(They were<\/em> the guards.) They came slowly
\n\tbut surely, black and white equally
\n\tat first. So when the white knights sidestepped
\n\tto camouflage their true intent,
\n\tI tried to study where they went
\n\tbut was drowned in the roiling wake
\n\tof a renegade rook, crisscrossed as it was
\n\tby the bloody path a misled Bishop took…\u201d<\/p>\n
\nwinged through billowing cumuli of smoke
\nthat hung above the jungle like lunacy:
\nsuch thundering was odd, a misspent tactic
\narriving much too early—
\nno one was ready:<\/p>\n
\n\thave run away again.
\n\tPlease if you see them,
\n\tbring them to she house
\n\ton Chasley Street. Wait, mahn—
\n\tthere be six of them.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nflood-of-butter allamanda;
\nhouse of sea spray, ghost crabs, sand,
\nair humid as skin—
\nI flew to you with my heart wide open
\nand learned what it means to be human.<\/p>\n
\nwhere heaven\u2019s endless arsenal of shooting stars
\nexplodes like Soufri\u00e8re each night…curled
\nlike a fist, the roaring Atlantic
\nlashing the length of your rigid spine to the east,
\nthe dazzling sapphire Caribbean
\nswirling in the cup of your gentle flesh
\nto the west,
\nyou are my guide…<\/p>\n
\ncrushes my eyes:
\nFly down that blazing runway with me
\ntill we run out of sky.<\/em><\/p>\nNotes<\/h4>\n
\nFirst Place (tie)<\/h2>\n
Penelope<\/h3>\n
\nLong face turned away, no interest in a passer-by,
\nEars pointing to some unknown time
\nWhen she can lie down in this fenced square
\nOf wood and wire, the bottom strands gaping.
\nBut look! Her twelve pink and black children
\nChase me lightly down the path
\nSputter through the leaves falling and the spent rain.
\nYou could scoop one up, feel her little heart
\nBeating against the taut skin cask of her body.<\/p>\n
\nExhausted by the weaving, the suitors,
\nAnd the unweaving, Telemachus hanging about,
\nWaiting for a ship to bring relief while out across the sea
\nWomen will one day hang screaming off the back of trucks
\nAlso looking for relief, which may come surprisingly
\nIn the onslaught black of bodies and bullets.<\/p>\n
\nLying unsheathed on the examination couch
\nSounding my depths with his lubricated wand,
\nMy chat about childbirth and caesarean section
\nDropping unwanted to the floor. He and my chaperone,
\nThey can\u2019t take a joke. Which means I take everything.
\nBarely human by the end, I wipe myself and get up.
\nI\u2019ll know in the post.<\/p>\n
\nIn these calm days of sun and wind and waiting
\nWe forget that the wriggling handmaids will all hang.
\nThat when Odysseus gets home, no one gets out alive.<\/p>\n
\nSecond Place (tie)<\/h2>\n
Let’s Steal a Boat<\/h3>\n
\nRowed hard into clump-salted weeds.
\nFloated oak with a generous hull
\nAnd larch for the oars and heavy.
\nWhile grey the wake of water deeps
\nTo raven pitch at folded night, full
\nNine yards in we shoulder the stars and
\nThickly breathe as though our reckless last.<\/p>\n
\nStone-lashed wharf, on scuttled nerve
\nLosing careful sight of the safe
\nThe mouldering ridges of shore.
\nWith slow cutting reach, further losing again
\nSmall sounds from beetling creatures,
\nBoneyards, turf, the tillage, our
\nHero-glut visions of roughed open wave.<\/p>\n
\n(A sneaking illness) on we go
\nThrown off by those who shake askant
\nTheir permanently licit heads
\nAt drifts like us who never built,
\nWho never felled a mighty oak,
\nWho never gathered food enough
\nTo feed the unsalted winter through.<\/p>\n
\nThe quiet. Nothing more. Nothing from the
\nFrozen air, from the sunken tides,
\nNothing from the idled moon
\nWho (resting) sags the horizon line. And
\nBeing not of the useful vagabond kind,
\nHolding instead to vain sodden rope,
\nFrom here we\u2019ll fail to fish.<\/p>\n
\nAggrieved at how poor souls like us
\nPoor pilot thieves (for such we are)
\nCould dare release from full parades of
\nUnused boats, a fairly anecdotal bucket
\nBegging for escape.
\nLet\u2019s steal a boat. And delve open
\nFresh gutter for this breaking game.<\/p>\n
\nSecond Place (tie)<\/h2>\n
Migration Inheritance<\/h3>\n
\nmodel realities: Her train
\nto Hong Kong didn\u2019t clank, no
\ndiesel clung dizzying
\nin the close air,
\nnobody contested
\nthe last seat. I don\u2019t know
\nhow she prepared for severing
\nher past, alone. Her modesty-
\ncloaked words disown praise;<\/p>\n
\nthe phantoms who drum
\nregret, thirsting for the life
\nleft\u2014return, return home
\nto the courtyard square,
\nthe desert breath sky, to tongues
\nlaboriously won. Cold faces
\nin the winter light, hawthorn fruit
\nambered in sugar glaze; joy<\/p>\n
\nto a life unlived.
\nLifted high, the bone-white
\nbaton in the conductor\u2019s hand
\nrises like a kite
\nand the choir\u2019s lungs fill, desperate
\nfor release. I recognize
\nmy grandmother in a stranger\u2019s words,
\nfor I\u2019ve knelt and seen the shadows
\nheld in her mouth, the blind-
\ncut scars she endured
\nto live anew. Gleam, let stones
\ngleam as we carry them
\nin our mouths to drown<\/p>\n
\nThe haunted congregate
\npreaching betrayal
\nof the self who never left.
\nA signal flare shades the sun
\nbehind a pillar of white smoke
\ndrawn into our lungs\u2014breathe,
\nit\u2019s only mist, the speech
\nof whales who plumb
\nthe sea with odes
\nto bioluminescent stars
\nadrift in the deep past
\nwe\u2019d left before we evolved
\nstories to tell.<\/p>\n
\nRunner Up<\/h2>\n
In Irish There Are Nine Directions<\/h3>\n
\nis the centre of our lives now.<\/p>\n
\nstood empty when we moved in.
\nThey never went on the market.
\nThe Quarry Mc Daids snapped them up,
\nput Ukrainians in. The daddy Ukrainian
\nclashes with the neighbour
\nwho organises the whip-round
\nfor the communal grass cut,
\nset up the owners\u2019 WhatsApp
\nto lobby the politicians to hurry up
\nthe flood defences,
\nbites his nails to the quick,
\npays a pre-crash mortgage
\non a worthless house
\nThrough my window, I see these men,
\nforeheads locked like stags about to rut,
\ntheir children spectating.
\nIt\u2019s about parking.
\nThe Ukrainian doesn\u2019t want the local\u2019s car
\noutside his house,
\nthe local has parked there for twenty years,
\nfeels like he\u2019s owed something for keeping
\nthe estate from going ghost.<\/p>\n
\nrises quicker than the specialists have ever seen.
\nOne day or year, or decade, a fence will run
\nin my backyard (once the lawyers get their cut).\u00a0
\nA flood wall will replace my roses and rhubarb.
\nWe\u2019ll believe it when we see the diggers.
\nI\u2019ll miss the tree where the song thrush perches.
\nOnce we had a sparrow hawk take down a crow.
\nHe returned for days to feast on the carcass,
\nleaving only feathers and skull.<\/p>\n
\nidentical to ours, government owned.
\nAfter the flood they didn\u2019t let the people
\nmove back in. Put up a fence and CCTV.
\nThey look grand \u2013 I wonder what\u2019s left.
\nScavengers surely stripped them clean.<\/p>\n
\nMc Daids. They\u2019ve Inishowen all sewn up.<\/p>\n
\nWe can apply for mica redress only when
\nthe fissures are big enough to fit a penny
\nlike the grannies at the slots on the border.<\/p>\n
\nfor me, close to the sea, in a bowl\u00a0of mountains,
\nan hour from my parents. Out of the North
\nbut still in it. Where Donegal meets Inishowen
\nand The North\u2019s bordered brokenness.<\/p>\n
\nRunner Up<\/h2>\n
Fortune Telling My Older Self<\/h3>\n
\nbefore bed, actually makes the cinnamon roll recipe<\/p>\n
\nholding up all 412 of our bones. She knows the safest place<\/p>\n
\nthat holds her back is actually the thing that holds me together.<\/p>\n
\nwe have been. She loves to watch. I can never tell<\/p>\n
\nspoon for my ice cream and the tallest mug for my tea –leaves<\/p>\n
\nAt night, when I watch the corners gather their dark skirts,<\/p>\n
\nof a wolf. I am always whispering the warm mistake<\/p>\n
\nof the amused smile surfacing before it breaks across<\/p>\n
\nShe smells like all of the years she has loved me.<\/p>\n
\nRunner Up<\/h2>\n
washed up<\/h3>\n
\nthis body of mine
\ncaught in the city
\nestuary-side, watching the trains
\nand the water leave
\nbehind
\nwindow glass and I am washed up
\nhere, left
\nwhen the tide went out<\/p>\n
\nin a car now scrap
\nthe car my grandmother bought
\nfive hundred miles
\nsouth
\nof her birth
\na life line I drove in reverse
\npeeling back the years
\ngot caught
\none hundred miles before the end<\/p>\n
\n(I did that
\nyears ago
\nwith someone else
\nanother memory
\nanother history)<\/p>\n
\nin the coast-bleached
\nbranches
\nand the strange places
\nI have no blood-remembered bond
\nlearning how to be a
\nnew belonging<\/p>\n
\nbreathing it
\nas up-river branches
\nleave behind their forest
\nidentity, and become
\nliminal, rock-bound
\ntidal<\/p>\n
\nlearn city, learn river
\nlearn home<\/p>\n
\n