The Poem of the Month for October 2023, selected by 2023 Anthology Editors, Maria Vouis and Rob Ferris, is Transtextuality by Stef Rozitis. The commended poems for October are Nature on the Table by Heather Nimmo, The Russet Room by Elaine Barker and Singing Lesson by Nigel Ford.
Transtextuality
Stef Rozitis
Politics is the whole point
fluid refusing to be grasped
avoiding sojourn in your killing jar.
I will not be pinned as a specimen
of this queer identity or that
instead,
I will be read only
as Lancelot, a shadow in the mirror of Shallot
I will be known through texts, excessive sex performances
a storm of answers.
No boxes will be ticked
but you may come
to read yourself through me
…this text in progress
Nature on the Table
Heather Nimmo
I am three generations from the soil,
my great-grandad, a ploughman near Dundee.
The only mice I saw in tenemented Paisley
weren’t fleeing from the plough
that overturned their nest.
Rabbie’s wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beasties.
The mice I saw in 1958
were running from the kitchen couch,
upturned by Dad, council-housed
and grammar-schooled, denatured,
looking for loose change
to pay the milkman.
Nature was not our nature.
Nature was on the table,
the nature table,
anesthetized in artful autumn leaves
and acorns, allowed inside
only if comatose or dead.
No common nettle, creeping thistle,
dandelion, dock.
While outside, trees, no longer forests,
stood apart in streets and parks,
unnoticed hosts to urban birds
we took for granted.
Nature was nightmare:
midges, earwigs, spiders, bumble bees
on bare feet grass, jam-sandwich wasps
and cauliflower slugs:
fairground fish in plastic bags,
prizes that promptly died, and
tadpoles in the scullery sink
turned suddenly to frogs escaping;
donkeys plodding along
oxymoron Scottish beaches,
water too wild to swim,
and seagulls
clamouring for chips.
But when the tide went out,
revealing rock pools,
we knelt before these underwater
worlds, so still, so silent,
of crabs and tiny fish, and
periwinkle snails,
in solid pale-blue spiral shells,
and limpets, free to move,
but clamped by teeth and tongue
to glistening rock,
resistant to the tide, and flowers,
the sea anemones,
their radiant tentacles retracting
at our deferential finger-touch.
We knelt and watched and
felt the glimmer of a world receding.
Nature, if only we had known it.
The Russet Room
Elaine Barker
Often she would stay up late to keep
him company on a winter night.
Of course the russet room became
her haven in the shadowed house.
They pulled the hours down as they read
and when the fire took hold
it kindled the curve of ornaments,
quickened poppies in their vase,
glazed the furthest corners of the room.
Elbows on the table, she would lean
into a leather–bound volume, embrace
the cool smell of parchment pages,
trace her fingers around
the raised ivy borders that framed
the collected legends of Greece and Rome.
Lost in a reverie she’d browse or doze,
start at a sudden flight of sparks
while the old clock in the hall
Dick Whittingtonned each quarter hour.
At twelve her grandfather stood and smiled
and tidied up his things –
the Illustrated London News and the Bulletins,
his glasses, pipe and pen.
In the silver silence of her bed
she was warmed by that companionship,
thoughts of cocoa in a mug, few words,
the books and magazines they had shared.
Singing Lesson
Nigel Ford
One sings
“What’s the colour of a two cent piece?”
and the chorus replies
“Dirty copper.”
The race is on
the race war is on
and the race warrior is off
running from those clothed
in a thin skin of blue
but it wasn’t really a fair race
the fair weren’t fair at all
one radio call fixed that
And as the young guy turned
this way and that
down one street then another
high-tailing from those trailing
putting good distance between
black face and red
darting down the alley
to the park
to the open ground
to no street lights
to disappear
into darkness
black skin swallowed
by black night
a leg stuck out
with barely a hint
of the spit-polished glint
on the boot tip
That leg stuck out
tripped him up
and another leg struck out
another spit-polished boot tip
kicked him in the lip
and another
and another
and another
a bit of glinting in the hinting
of the little light left
at the end of the alley
Split lips and spit chips of teeth
sprayed the spit-polished boot tips
so much spit
from split lips
they wouldn’t need their own
to polish those boots
for a long time
The boys in blue
with the spit-polished boots
kept up the lesson
until the checkered strip
on the side of the divvy van
waved a finishing flag
for a race well run
a race war well won
a job well done
it was all just a bit of fun
something to brag about
to the boys in blue
over beers in the blue blood club
in Carrington Street
about another
Aboriginal with attitude
taught a singing lesson
taught another stinging lesson
about finances
and cleanliness
and respect for the law