AnnMarie Eldon

you/r fake and the must therefore after many eventual edges

to knives theirs the choice theirs the active: I

the which best? utility array: I

serendipitous seaming

display my solomon’s

riding carpet: I

fleck-one deft-

hand

sudden seeming

sweep you away on

trust my ah there flick-one

sway you/r unawares cut watch

y/our flail y/our beautiful tailwing slut pervail you/r splitty

fail you/r narcissus überbent you/r miasammed

disregard; the butter-one used as

shiv: scalpel too obvious

you/r fight the deadening you/r escape you/r

propofol lie propping watch breath watch head-

turn watch you/r dense innocence hiss

from you/r effect-hole every fibre

strain for good, kind, sweet,

innocent, always the

underdog re-

frain: I

haft for chorus

unbroken chorus

of pre-tend christian and bible

and hebrew 'n snatch you/r bloody

image build into its own cur-cancer: I

whittle the seduct veins make fly make rise

make fake aspiration an art form feed you/r greedy

you/r insatiable you/r painself nurturing each young

you/rthrob-artery into ritual aggrandisement

would fork you/r pride flubber would

cuttle-lick a what a prick

you/r essence disabléd

a slow -build pin

bled

do bet do wish do spell

for an arsehole anastrozole

would fist a catling into your curare dread

but take my lancet wit and burst

you/r bubble in

stead

'A brave and original work,' the winner of this year's National Poetry Competition Christopher James on my poem 'Stradivarius sediments' in the Guardian's poetry workshop
Collisions

Stradivarius sediments

my fingers fail their source: I

forage discovery, play Braille

with emerging acuity find

a Nile neck force a

flax field digest: I

flail for durra, falter, dither, pray

in sit-reps discover Bruce peas lobo

livingston stanley speke steppes

along the way: I

silt my hope grown frail sliver to

lint unlimp, purfling regrets a

slow brahms neck to

blue white blue

white fret: I

ignore sustenance

the wheated bores

the eonilitic clastics: I

felucca chopin, a fig melon

pomegranate cause, catgut for

that, a spruced euthenia, maple-hapi

anuket with schubert, a broad flet neilos-elgar

eldering my pegbox to its scroll, how

old this course this brave grabbing

this hailed brief spin of sorts

this eventual pining

deterioration cut

to a delta of, a

tailpiece

endpin

of course-lore

where we all in our own

ruvyironza sudden spiccatoed beginning

die