And now at last, since the New Welsh Review has appeared, we can put the poems on our site. So here they are:
Victor Tapner
Kalashnikov
I am promiscuous and unashamed.
My lovers take me to cool rooms
where I'm stroked by many hands.
I live secretly in the suburbs,
pampered and spared ordinary chores.
My lovers trust me not to let them down.
I sleep in strange places: on floors
of what were once apartment blocks;
amid rubble on the street
cradled in rough arms waiting for daybreak.
I've lain with the corpse of a boy
in the back of a burnt-out truck.
The touch of sweat is all my lovers leave.
At night they are led to empty cellars
where they give their bodies to pain.
I've seen them kneel in narrow alleys
murmuring, as though at prayer.
Such yearnings even I can't satisfy.
One afternoon, on a hillside
I was brought to a fresh grave in the rain.
People were mourning a name
I'd hardly known: a one-night stand.
It's at such times I laugh. Head raised,
I cackle at the heavens. I feel no loss.
The Academi City of Cardiff International Poetry Competition 1st Prize winner 2000
Lynne Rees
Moving On
From where I lie, I can pick you up in an inch
of space between my thumb and finger, and put you
down anywhere - out onto the sea to bob along
on your metal framed, candy striped boat. Or here
next to me, so I can taste the salt on you.
Or along the beach among the sea cucumbers,
shrinking to millimetres as you travel. You're light
as the wind as I whisk you over the sand, and unaware
of your own fantastic journey - your muscles, limbs,
puppets to the pressure of my fingertips.
I can crush you, press gently until my thumb
and finger meet, squeeze all the sea water
out of you, rub the skin together until you're
just the grains of yourself. But I don't.
I return you to the place you chose, at the edge
of the sea, your back bent over and glowing
in the sun, liberating shards of seashells
from between your toes. I ease my fingers away
and your hand lifts, runs through your hair
as if missing the weight of something from above.
The Academi City of Cardiff International Poetry Competition 4th Prize winner 2000
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