Eratosphere - The Oldie "Thirteen" comp results. **Wins for Bazza and Lance**

Thirteen was certainly not unlucky for four Spherians. Congratulations to Bazza and Lance for 50% of the winning words (a 13-liner too, Lance - nice one!) and also to Martin E and Frank for earning Honourable Mentions with their clever mathematical poems. Well done, guys! :D

(Next comp on new thread.)

Jayne

xxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro

IN COMPETITION No 159 you were invited to write a poem with the title ‘Thirteen’. I admired Philip Cram’s audacity in rhyming ‘cornflakes’ with
‘vitamin AB complex’. Martin Elster celebrated the Fibonacci series of numbers, observable in flowers: one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen. Frank Osen’s mind was also running on a series: ‘Like 2 and 67 and 281 and 983, 13 is prime.’ ‘You missed out on the clock face and the months of the year,’ wrote Martin Stote, addressing the number dismissively, ‘The age we can marry, the bars on a gate.’
Two competitors, Linda René-Martin and K P Poole, celebrated the glories of the No 13 bus. But G M Davis’s 13-yearold narrator, torn between incest and parricide, took refuge in ‘Computer games and porn. / Without them I might feel regret / At ever being born.’
Commiserations to them and congratulations to those below, each of whom wins £25, with a bonus prize of a Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary going to Basil Ransome-Davies – who last won 13 issues ago.

Not every motel has a room thirteen but this one did.
I wasn’t superstitious when I drove out there and hid,
The wilds of west Kentucky, fifty miles from Bowling Green,
A run-down row of units, small and squat and not too clean.
The calendar was yesteryear’s, the desk clerk was on dope,
But backwoods anonymity was now my only hope.
I owed a mobbed-up bookie and the cops were on my case
And someone’s jealous spouse had sworn to massacre my face.
With a bottle of Wild Turkey and a bluesteel thirty-eight
I switched the mono TV on, prepared to face my fate.
Could it be annihilation, by the bullet or the noose?
I lived the vital moment, existential as Camus.
My pursuers soon found me. One by one I watched them fall.
They had vowed to take their vengeance and my pistol killed them all.
So thirteen was unlucky for that ill-assorted crew
And blood flowed like a crimson flood, but what’s a girl to do?
Basil Ransome-Davies

O for a draft of the Hippocrene
the day before I turn thirteen
To bolster me for coming years
When my hurly-burly man appears.
Oh, if he must let him come so
that we’re twin compasses who know
when each leg must and must away.
When one’s alone alone t’will stay,
Childhood one, the man the other,
The man, who beams at his little brother
and kisses him with a strong good-bye,
no more to tell the ancient lie
that the child is father to the man.
Lance Levens

At age thirteen you’re in-between,
Neither one thing nor ’tother,
Lanky, gawky, inky, chalky,
Mistaken for your brother.
Flat of feet and flat of chest
What a sight you look undressed.
No curves, no curls, like other girls,
The sexiness is lacking.
That silky dress, with lace no less,
On you looks just like sacking.
So many things you’re not allowed
Driving, drinking, smoking,
You cannot even buy a knife
To slit your throat – I’m joking!
Think ‘tempus fugit’, what I mean
In twelve months’ time you’ll be fourteen!
Mary Hodges

Being thirteen years old is a peculiar time,
like a story told in a thirteen-syllable line
and not rhyming properly. At a village hall fête
in the war, my mother served tea while I hung about,
bored, looking at the raffle prizes (a handknitted
hot water bottle cover, some raffia-knotted
bunches of radishes) and then – heavens! – a rabbit
in a hen-coop. Silky brown fur. I had to have it,
simply had to. My rabbit – it was already mine –
was also for raffling, and Ticket Number Thirteen
cost all my pocket money. So then I rushed back home
and Dad said he’d build a hutch. But when my ticket won,
he groaned. My mother sighed and asked, ‘Did you really think
he could?’ The rabbit had a P&O cabin trunk,
wire-netting-topped. It was difficult to understand
why no one trusted the winning number in my hand.
Alison Prince