Runners Up 2003

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'Wrapped in Logic' by David Seaman
'Eugene' by Sienna Smale-Jackson
'The Little Heart' by Meg Waghorn
'Family Bonding at 4am' by Joanna Wang

Catherine Palmer (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

The Hearts on the Vines

The hearts on the vines smile, the white hearts
bloodless as albino babies.
They pump nothing.

A man
               (silent opening of spiracles,
               membrane primed to snap)
finds a deep and heady music
between layers of lipid.
A man
          is masticated.

And the white hearts smile:
truncated sadness. They know
where the path leads, trees leaning in anticipation
and proteinaceous like silk.
They bare flaxen teeth.

A woman's fingers
               (swelling like amoebae under milk sheen,
               skin of a tough and wizened greed)
encircle a molten core.
She listens rapturous; it beats for her alone.
A woman
     is consumed.

The hearts on the vines smile.
They are cold.

David Seaman (Taradale High School, Napier)

Wrapped in logic

I wonder what it would be like
if you came in test pot size
or A5:
Just to taste.

Try you on my walls,
a frame for the sky.

If you don't fit
it might be easier to store you
under a shelf.

Sienna Smale-Jackson (Otago Girls' High School, Dunedin)

Eugene

my brother is
in the bathtub.
he is playing with
his heart's plumbing.
he puts the plunger
onto his chest
and pushes down,
the plunger sucking
itself upward,
releasing the clog
of clotted emotions.

when he gets out
there's a red, rashy
circle in the middle
of his ribcage;
all the body's pipes
pulled too close to
the surface.
his lips stretch up into
a sanguine smile,
unconcealed, open-hearted.

Meg Waghorn (Rangi Ruru Girls' School, Christchurch)

The Little Heart

Cut away your pale skin with a pen.
Old silk or lace, folded carefully
In a wide box, with tissue.

False heart,
Bare in its cage of little ribs.
Wet in your cold hand, roll it in ink and watch
The way it rubberstamps itself across the page.

The little heart is tired now
Smudged black, small in your hand.
Warm red fish.

Slot it back in place
Like the jigsaw piece of you it is.

Safely inside your warm self
The little heart throbs quiet.

Your veins run black with ink.

Joanna Wang (Pakuranga College, Auckland)

Family bonding at 4am

My grandmother woke up at crazed 4am
looking for her moneybelt
waking the entire family.
And because she sleeps in the lounge,
and because she resents it,
her fury was more pronounced,
slamming the hallway door so hard that
I found a dent in the wall the next day.
Stomping her feet, angrily loud,
my grandmother searched for her 50 grand
up, and down the hallway. The bathroom. The toilet.
The laundry.
The kitchen. Cupboards.
Scrutinising every single tiny grain of space
for a bright red bulging belt she thinks I know nothing about.
Knock, knock, on my mother's door.
"I've lost the bloody thing."
A long time later, my mother got up,
(she would get hell for that slow response later)
and mother, and daughter,
navigated through the labyrinth of 25 walls in our house.

"It was under her bed."
I could hear my dad's laughter from next door.
He shouldn't have done that
now there are two things for the grandmother to cry over.
With the moneybelt tucked safely under her pillow,
my grandmother went back to bed,
while the entire family thought about the money and 4am.