Winners 2015

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Isla Anderson (Winner)

Woldingham School, Surrey

The Forensics of Salt-Licking

Poem, this. Laboratory. Strip
-lit, search-lit, clean. Fluorescence
shuttering the tremor of it all – the blur

of all these fingertips, adrenalin
as refugee. Circulating, curdling
the blood; receptorless, and never

where I needed it to thrash. Him,
hook. Him twenty-something, liquor
tongued and warm; him hand

past the ladies’ toilets, out
beneath the Kapok, silted feet. Baby
let me show you something,
yeah? Gospel, this. My stumble-drunk
consent, my false sixteen. Body just.
Saying so what if it happens here

like this? Brush my teeth. Forget
his slow mastectomy smile – years on, try
to swab him from the lining of my cheeks,

to magnify. On the glass, it seems
his cells remain like salt-lick in my mouth;
put in focus, all that’s left is gutted lime.

© Isla Anderson, 2015