Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition
In Competition No. 2660 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of a bodily part that has been overlooked by poets.
You turned out in force to celebrate the unsung heroes of our anatomy. Sonnets to the spleen rubbed shoulders with paeans to the pancreas and odes to organs I’d never heard of. Some made me queasy, others — Mick Poole, especially — made me chortle; but everyone impressed, so congratulations all round.
The winners, printed below, earn £25 each and G.M. Davis pockets £30.
There are those whose gonads ripple at the
mention of a nipple,
While others prize the knuckle or the heel,
And although the thought may pain us there are
some who view the anus
As their cherished anatomical ideal.
There are rumours that the eyebrows lure a coterie
of highbrows,
That the spleen is more to Middle England’s taste
And that groupies of the humerus are both poorly
schooled and numerous ‹
But my interest resides below the waist.
Yes, the kneecap is my Laura, since its charismatic
aura
Uplifts me to Petrarchan heights of verse.
In my dream life the patella is superlatively stellar.
In its mystagogic depths I self-immerse.
Like a Rohmeresque obsessive I aspire to be
expressive,
To touch the joint that haunts me night and day;
But the gendarmes aren’t romantic, they are
rulebound and pedantic,
And I often get arrested, sad to say.
G.M. Davis
Shall I compare thee to the Pearly Gates?
No pearls thy heavenly portals could eclipse.
The charms of each the other duplicates
There, where the septum sits above the lips
And hidden channels bifurcate to form
Those wondrous apertures of dark delights
Where turbinals and mucous membranes warm
Cold air inhaled on bitter winter nights.
Aesthetically positioned, side by side,
They sniff and sneeze and twitch and flare and
smell,
And what enchanting mysteries they hide
Within their phlegm-filled chambers none can tell.
Let others, other body parts admire.
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