Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Runner Up - Lesley Saunders

Lesley Saunders, author of several books/pamphlets of poetry, enjoys very much creating collaborations with painters, sculptors, dancers and other artists. She has held several poetry residencies in intriguing locations and her commended poem in the competition is one of a new sequence of pieces on vaguely scientific themes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glass

I was drinking champagne, it gave me the illusion
I was made of flesh, a craze-proof, life-size model

of myself that no-one could see through. My beautiful
glass-blower's fingers were losing their lucidity, as if

at that very moment my husband were making love to me -
I imagined his minute seeds transcendent as glass bubbles

and for a second I wanted so much to be pristine and fragile
under his hands like a Blaschka jelly-fish or Chihuly supernova,

to be looked at with speculation and surrender.
It was a shattering thought. I didn't feel suicidal at the time

although it was obvious the world was going to explode,
its hyaline spores flying through the darkened museum

like a star-burst or the dismantled working parts
of the crystal Cadillac we once saw in a showroom in Bohemia.