Poems and Pictures

YORK LOVESONGS

I (for Charlotte) One morning, when stepping outside was like walking into sunlight through a billion pink flowers, I spiked a girl's drink at breakfast with poems. But she never noticed until she choked on orange-blossom. XIV (for Isla) Summer comes and your dresses bloom pink, white, blue; and we sit breaking smoke-rings on our fingers. XX (for Rachel) Coloured petals fall around us like the gentlest of reminders, so May will always smell of peaches (the cosmetic fruit in the glass) and the bright blossom will always mean this is the right time. X They fined me a hundred pounds for the handful of daffodils I took from around the city walls, so don't say I never buy you flowers.

Antony Dunn "York Lovesongs" were in Antony's prize-winning Skrentny Folder.

A GRANDMOTHER'S LULLABY

I hear music on the wind as the fly brushes the strings of the spider's web, across fields the dull thud of hawk-talons bursting through the sparrow's chest, and blood flowing to earth, laughter as the river rushes home to the sea, whose murmuring tides chase the sweet voice of the moon. I hear the song of a crowd of stars hiding love's lonely face, the rolling of silent wars between the dark clouds and the sun, the skies repeat the stories that candle-smoke whispers to the eaves. Dawn breathes into morning, dusk speaks to the night, and clear through the air, where the trees bow down to me, I can hear the secrets of all men's hearts blowing through the leaves. I have heard all things, my dear; heard all since the day the good Lord softly came to me and took my sight away. Antony Dunn

Antony was awarded the Crook Prize for Poetry for this poem.

HER BIRDS

Jellyfish float like bruises on the green shore-battered waves; the salt waste dries tongues to silence and tokens to ashes.

I scatter the red soft dust in clouds which shock the water

pink as the sunrise. The white birds drag themselves free of her

wire, and stagger up into the sky and across to me, fly blindly into the wire along my shores; I see them coming, I see them tangled, bloody, crying out to be rescued. And I can not rescue them, can not send them back.

Antony Dunn Balsa parrots and toucans — green, yellow, orange — chemical flames among the tropical leaves of suburbia's jungles. Rainforest mist shrouding plants and birds in heady opiates of wet dog and net curtains. The hunter hacks boldly through webs of foliage, and spills onto the road through his own front door. Stalking drunkenly across the street, elephant-gun in hand, he bursts into the pub and takes shots at a plastic gnome on the hardwood bar — "see, you damn monkeys — see what I've invented..." The apes around the watering-hole turn sad brown eyes towards him, yawn, and vanish into the green and grey of the forest. All except one

one stays behind, laughing. Antony Dunn

I just can't run fast enough to get away from me and if I turn round quick enough it's still that familiar face I see. It's hot again; that cool desire to find someone who'll be somebody I can try to love who'll always want to love the best of me: don't mind too much to hold it close to feel my hands get burned — these hands that were before so strong have now against me turned and I knew that I could be there I knew I was the one to see it all so certain I could be the one the one forever standing tall and I wonder as I fall did I ever really know at all.

I just can't climb high enough; I can still see the ground — and if I listen hard enough I can always hear that raining sound. A fool was I to use my eyes to leave unblocked my ears: I heard the echoing emptiness there was nothing to stop that flood of tears; don't mind too much if you want to go I'd do the same too now that I know it hurts so much to love through pain and truth and I knew that I would be there. I knew I was the one to be it all so certain I would be the one the one forever standing tall

and I wonder as I fall did I ever really know at all?

Richard Jarmain