Every year the New Zealand Poetry Society runs an international poetry competition. In 2021 I was the winner of the Open section with my piece Death Mask Daisy.
Thank you to NZPS for running this fantastic competition every year, for the generous prize, and big thanks to Lynley Edmeades for seeing something in my work. And thanks to my dearest Emer and Liz for their feedback on an early version.
Death Mask Daisy I found two corpses on the lawn baby birds with fat bellies wings with the first sign of feathers a daisy had glued itself to one tiny dead face tiny dead face gracefully masked I had been cutting overgrown decorative bushes clearing out the unwanted living with the aid of secateurs how’d the babies get there though? the centre of the lawn “dead birds” I said to no one made that aww no sound begloved hands placed the dead placed the dead together in shades of blue and white in the twisted twigs of a compost pile under an aging hedge the scent of decay mingled within the greenery in stages of its own earthly reclamation how’d they get there? the babies the babies’ tiny dead faces.
You can find this poem within the 2021 NZPS Anthology, Kissing a Ghost, available to purchase here.