The Poem of the Month for December 2023, selected by 2023 Anthology Editors, Maria Vouis and Rob Ferris, is Lot 22 by Valerie Volk. The commended poems for December are In Worrying Times by Elaine Barker, strings by phil saunders and Akin (excerpt) by Robbie Lennard.
Lot 22
Valerie Volk
Impersonal, the auctioneer’s drone.
Small square wooden case. Unusual.
An apathetic crowd. My pang of guilt,
in spite of family pressure, voice of reason.
Time to downsize, get rid of stuff.
But this. I should have kept it.
Made by a father’s loving hand.
I hear his accent, still …
A case for you, for school.
Polished to a burnished gloss,
three initials on the lid, in gold,
my name. His pride in craftsmanship.
Uneasy, even as I took his offering,
aware of how – again, yes yet again –
I would be different.
All my peers, with normal bags,
I, child of immigrants, with wooden case.
It’s battered now, like memories,
I only hope I thanked him,
hope he never knew the effort
defiant flaunting of that case would need.
I doubt that any bidder on Lot 22
would feel the mingled pride and shame
this six-year-old did battle with.
Unresolved ambivalence still smarts.
‘Passed in’. No bids.
I took it home to store once more
with other memories.
In Worrying Times
Elaine Barker
Here they are, the children from next door.
They’ve taken over the footpath,
their supple backs bent, bottoms in the air.
And with words that they know
they are spelling out in chalk
a message of hope and goodwill –
BE kiNd and LoVe and Happy Days.
Weaving through a flurry of stars
and images of the sun and moon
their rainbow ribbons over the pavement
to where a get-together of sparrows
has been drawn into the frame.
In their garden nearby the children have set
two figures on an old cane chair –
a doll in a yellow dress and fancy hat
and a cheery well-worn teddy bear
and it’s hard not to believe
that they are smiling at the passers-by.
You place your trust in these young girls,
find odd comfort in their labour.
The sky is greying over
and there’s a smell of rain in the air
yet they seem unconcerned that the weather
could wash their dreams away.
strings
phil saunders
life’s debris
notches in a diary
memories to haunt
head turning soul twisting among scraps.
uneven surfaces for the unwary
head back lay back
life wafts by.
home is where stories are to be told
fragments
surface scratches unleash pain intolerable
deep open sores festering.
cry for home
heart knows its journey over forbidden steps
tears inside an unbidden flood
unable to drown memories.
drawn into crypts.
droplets of life
loneliness and despair escaping
blood cries drops into the sea
waves of scraps
home cries beckoning return
offering nothing.
staging post
dwelling in forgiveness for refreshment
carry me away from torment
faces on the walls of my soul.
From notes written while watching performance of Australian String Quartet, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel String Quartet in E-flat Major and Antonin Dvorak String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major, Op. 105, November 2023.
Akin (excerpt)
Robbie Lennard
… here’s my akin to Christina Georgina’s
Goblin-like market –
my halflit halfway house …
my DGR’s halcyon House of Life
my ‘half-way-there’
and half-arsed nightingale’s attempt
at a CGR Song of Love
my Emily Dickinson
Anne Sexton
SP
HD
my … you do not do
you do not do
soft-shoe
funeral-in-my-brain
epiphany from above
my avalanche in a book Christina gave me
Dante’s cascading waterfall to save me
to enlighten me
inspire me
… lead me to …
a ‘shady cypress tree’
a dewdrop-wet tombstone
Christina’s ‘when I am dead my dearest
sing no sad songs for me’
twilight-of-the-world lamplit immortality …
her always clearly remembered
and never-forgotten
poetic sensibility
.
… dear, dear
Christina
Georgina
Rossetti
I love you
for all eternity …
I love your quinces and gooseberries
your ‘Citrons from the South’
your plump strawberries
your dew-dropped red roses
and shady cypress trees …
Christina Georgina
… whilst standing by a London stream
I chanced to catch your image gleam
I wondered as I saw it smile –
with that oft remembered style …
that did this image –
if image be?
likewise gaze and muse at me –
and to it in yon watered-lair …
was I but the image – caught in air
… caught in a moment of CGR poetical reverie
kissing quinces and gooseberries
… ‘Citrons from the South’
and plump strawberries
… dew-dropped red roses
and shady cypress trees …
tasting the forbidden fruits
of CGR incessantly
… never forgetting …
always remembering …
lingering in a state of euphoric ecstasy
… mesmerised by every beauteous line
of your transcendent poetry
Ms. Rossetti
… mesmerised in halcyon days of yore …
durin’ fleetin’ ticks of starstruck recentness
… mesmerised all-the-while whilst trapped within …
the forever of foreverness …
the never-never netherworld
of neverending neverness …
the ethereal realm of remembrance
and forgetfulness …
the drift that drifts
ever upwards and onwards
towards some far-flung distant
Elysian-spot
lying somewhere far far beyond
the infinite