Runners Up 2004

Melissa Chen (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

Reprise

yesterday(fine)

do you remember summer days
blazing sforzandos when you pushed me higher
always & told me you liked glissandos
i turned from the sky and watched you
waving on the ground happily

& winter lead you by the hand away
you were lost in the morning fog
but you called it love &
drew hearts on opaque glass
they bled but you laughed

later you cried i heard your tears staccato
fall your cheek pressed against
the window pane matching raindrops
outside you sospirando in the dark
the piano in e minor for
forty days and forty nights

beneath floorboards in your room
a gold laced book
on sun-stained pages in cobweb ink
a requiem unnamed

now the birds sing a capellas but
you are deaf & twice disgraced

on the window
not rain nor frost but
bleeding hearts rhapsodies &
fingerprints
on white piano keys thin black islands
& dust middle c untouched
(Da Capo al fine)

Helen Lyttelton (Rangi Ruru Girls' School, Christchurch)

Cards

We are playing cards.
I hold myself back,
feeling for the right moment
to end the game.
I grip my set in a fan by my heart
so you can't see,
though you never cheat.

I remember that bright-grey day
in the park.
I thought the sky
was on the brink of something.
A storm, perhaps,
or a heavenly announcement.

Unfolding my austere umbrella,
I scooped up a brown bundle
of leaves&srquo;
carefully, because you never know
what might be underneath.

Clutching them,
I watched you toss your own
bright curling leaves
into the wind
and you danced around
as they fell and stuck in your hair.

Shezani Nasoordeen (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

Gardening for the 21st Century Woman

Prune.
This is the only way
you will get anywhere
girls.

Be ruthless.
Who needs frivolous flowers
and leaves
and fruit.
All that nonsense
will be of no use
to you.

You must start
with some sharp secateurs.
Cut first
the flower
then the stalk
and the woody root
until you are left
with a neat
manageable
skeleton.

Next week girls–topiaries.

Meg Ryburn (Rangi Ruru Girls' School, Christchurch)

Monbretia

Late-summer-green leaves
Trail lazy fingers through tired brown water.
My schoolgirl shoes and white ankle socks
Plod steadily along with my down-to-earth kilt.

The toi toi and flax rise high above my head
With its neat blonde plait.
Suddenly my eye is caught by the bright monbretia;
Daring orange amongst the placid green.

Drab thoughts of homework and Hamlet
Fleet as effortlessly from my mind as
Murky water flows under the bridge beside me.

With that one sight
T houghts of you
B ombard all my senses.

"Mombritches?!" you said hesitantly, jokingly,
As you tried to remember
The name I had taught you.
I didn't care, soaked through and covered in river mud
I laughed.

I instructed you to look at the sunset
And you told me about cricket
As our arms moved in sync while we paddled home.

Arielle Tai (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

Le Ode to Teenage Angst

Thomas is a Goth.
He dyed the hair
that he wears long,
black
like his clothes and shoes and
lipstick.

On the pages of his journal
are his latest poems.
"Blood
Darkness
Despair
Why? "

Thomas stops to think.
He wishes he was a vampire.
Then everyone would be scared of him
or think he was cool
and invite him to their parties.

"Honey! Dinnertime!"

Thomas puts his pen down
and bounds down the stairs
two by two,
to Simpsons,
and his dinner of steak and potatoes.

International Institute of Modern Letters Te Pūtahi Tuhi Auaha o Te Ao