Congratulations to Anjali in Lower 6 for being awarded Highly Commended at the Christopher Tower Poetry Competition Final last night.
Here’s her entry:
the lost sailor’s ecstatic drowning
silence collects on my skin in flakes.
in the background, her soporific humming.
the ticker-timer of my heartbeat
is frantic; my fingernails are purple.
we exchange sweet nothings
through the imprints of my fingertips,
the braille of vesicles under my skin.
my breath curdles. it’s erotic; the sweet burning
of asphyxiation.
mouth froths like whitecaps / tongue furs over like coral /
skin atrophies under her gentle touch.
floating higher, my eyes roll back into my head
and i give myself, gladly, in devotion, in possession.
i am thrumming / throbbing / transmuting.
bubbles of empty blood pop. alveoli burst in climax;
stellate particles cartwheel in slow motion,
pinpricks of plasma catch the light.
words eddy, sucked away,
a question mark curled tight – don’t answer –
my soft tissues calcify.
salt constellates;
her tongue laps all over, and
i am cannibalised / fossilised / hers in death
always.
i want to have you, she whispers.
i can’t move my lips but, you have me,
i’m sobbing silently.
we’re her secret cache; diasporas of us
sleeping eternally in her seabed.
left to
suffer her song in silence.