It’s nice to be having one of those. One of my poems was chosen as winner of a competition, with another being longlisted too. You can read and hear them here, but this is the one that won:
It’s another from the collection about my mum, as you will gather. I hope it speaks to you.
Changing your bed again, I’m careful to put back,
there to the left where your hand falls easily,
the battered tissue box you keep near you
with stuff you might need: two opened pocket-packs,
the hearing-aid case, lipsalve, a flattened carton
of painkillers and a small hand-held electric fan
which—I find later, when I go to turn on
the blanket—I must have knocked, for it’s
thrumming away in the silence, its blades trapped
and tapping at the box’s sides (must have been on
for hours), fast at first I guess but now,
when I find it, feebler and beginning to falter.
I don’t often think of myself as a less-is-more woman, but sometimes I manage it!
