Eratosphere - The Oldie 'Easy Peelers' results

Many congratulations to Annie for a great poem. I know exactly what you mean: having to do the ‘Big Bite’ and ‘twisting my face almost to the point of tears’ is the reason that I always cut up an orange into quarters!

Regarding “. . .I wish I had room to print more entries”, if the *~~!!?* Bridge column didn’t take up a third of the whole page (why can’t they stick it elsewhere in the magazine?) then there could be more poems. I know I’ve banged this particular drum before but it remains a bone of contention . . . Humph!)

Next comp: "Changeable" (see new thread)

Jayne

The Oldie Competition
by TESSA CASTRO

In competition 202, you were asked for a poem called ‘Easy Peeler’. I was surprised by the strongly sexual direction in which the title took many contributors. No matter. But I wish I had room to print more entries, such as Bill Webster’s Kiplingesque villain’s monologue or G Ewing’s denunciation of ready grated, easy cook, easy iron life or Margaret A Gray’s charming vignette of a sharp little knife mended with string.
Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of an easy-to-read Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to GM Southgate.

Salome shed her seven veils (a slow seduction never fails)
And Mata Hari’s sultry shape peeled elegantly, like a grape.
But Mother Nature shows the way in putting on the best display.
The snake is a commanding case; it sheds its skin with easy grace;
The caterpillar does the same. The dragonfly of river fame
Presents a stained glass window wing.
The frog and lizard also fling
Their skins away, and look like new; the grasshopper can do it too.
The red deer buck casts off his coat and opens his imperious throat,
The maple with its paperbark will grace the meanest public park.
The willow strips, the eucalypts peel off without a hint of fuss,
Quite different from the rest of us. Except for politicians,
They appear to do it every day.
G M Southgate

Photographs, plus memory, both show
reality – back then, and when the beach
was gritty shingle and the sea more ice floe
than the fabled Med. Our lives. So each
and every holiday the same old chill –
bracing ourselves against the salty slap,
the waves a weighty slam (no lacy frill)
and wildly hungry roar (no dainty lap).
Then came the worst: called out, scoured by the wind,
and while a scratchy towel scrubbed us, shy,
we shed our hand-knit swim-suits, glad to find
they slipped down without thought – and we were dry,
taking for granted we would always be
able to peel off swim suits easily.
D A Prince

Was there ever a copper like Wheeler?
More laid back or lacking-in-zealer?
When faced with a conman or spieler,
With a card-sharp or bogus faith-healer
With a dealer in bootlegged tequila
A thug or a light-fingered stealer,
With a madam, some plausible Sheila
On the game like Rice-Davies or Keeler,
Or a can’t-keep-his-hands-off-them feeler
Or a ripe-for-the-leaning-on squealer,
He sits back and he smiles to reveal a
Flaneur than whom no cop’s genteeler.

Can you doubt that this Constable Wheeler’s
The easiest of all easy peelers?
Robin Gilbert

‘Doing the Big Bite’ was a mother-thing,
the act of one omniscient and kind.
It made a way to all that lay within
the big cold orange with its leather rind
whose sour impression on a little face
twisted it almost to the point of tears.
Taking the first hit was an act of grace
incumbent on one more advanced in years.
Holding the umbilicus in one’s teeth,
driving them down into the vicious pith
to liberate the juicy underneath
and hand it humbly back to little kith.
The easy peeler is a sort of sin
that makes the vitamins accessible
without the onslaught on the pitted skin
that made one’s mother irreplaceable.
Ann Drysdale