OSCAR TAVERNIER
Commended - 2024 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Mirror'
Sister NamoW
I didn't recognise myself today | I was
My eyes were those same drying drenched violets | A wisp of dust
They saw themselves all right | Like those shores of silence
My blonde hair dazzled the lamplight | Riding up a lamppost's glare
Golden freckles in the light | Golden freckles in the light
They saw that eventually | I was
What they saw first though | A shadow of God
Was the shame | Bumbling through a stained glass' ecstasy
The shame of the spots | I was
Not hidden by any makeup | A nightingale's song -
Like she had hid them | The man was playing Schubert
And they all rose and burned | And it all rose and burned
And all the oil came out from them | And popped and swore
And rode the grooves crashed destroyed | Like the nightingale's song -
Like the avalanche down the winterlet | Immortal sure
But the black pines still stand tall | But most of all
The black spines off my chin | Like her hands?
I heard a noise and turned and looked and saw from the side the | They were thin as the piano's sound
Nose | And white as its keys
That I would give to Gogol with an arm and a leg | And they moved
These damn apish arms and fuzzy legs boxing me out of bed and into the world | So softly like leaves dancing on their branches in the wind
Like they had boxed me these past 17 years | Like they had moved these past 17 years
And then my hair again | They are woman's hands
This damned hair | Mine are not.
knots Knots knots in this damned hair | Mine never will be.
My mum calls it an angelic halo | My 17 years were not.
But she also calls me a boy | Will my 60 be?
This putrid sickly yellow | I have lost 17
Rope | I must find those 60
Long or not it's | Oh my fingers
Coarse Dry Hard Twisted | Coarse Dry Hard Twisted
It's a man's hair | Like the Knots knots Knots they've tied
Oh well. | Oh well.
If I stay up here | The dust, the light, the music
I won't hear the boys call each other fags. | Did not care about hands.