[Jayne Osborn]

My thrill at winning the biggie last month has diminished only slightly. Here are the latest results. 'Cowboy' is a gift for all of you across the pond, surely? Let's hope one of you (or John) romps home with the big prize for this.
Send them to: editorial@literaryreview.co.uk
Jayne

THIS MONTH’S POEMS were on the subject of ‘private joy’. Noel Petty won and will receive £300; Iain Colley came second and will receive £150; and the two others printed will receive £10. Next month’s subject is ‘cowboy’; do with it what you will, but poems must rhyme, scan and make sense, in 24 lines or fewer. The deadline is 28 September.

First Prize: For Your Eyes Only by Noel Petty
In tourist mode – to call a spade a spade –
when seeing all the stipulated sights,
the one you take away, that most delights,
carries no stars, no guidebook accolade.
Never the Sistine, always the obscure, small
deserted chapel in the quiet square,
that up to now you never knew was there,
that nobody had told you of at all.
The rarely-heard fantasia that draws
your unrehearsed response; the gallery find
by unknown hand; the poem unenshrined:
some sudden sense of kinship makes them yours.
You know you should espouse them, should declare
their worthiness to be more widely known,
and yet you don’t. They are for you to own.
Some joys are public, others not to share.
These are for cherishing, and not for selling,
to conjure up in bleaker seasons, while
your friends are puzzled by your absent smile.
What joys are mine? Ah, now, that would be telling.

Second Prize: Consolation by Iain Colley
A rainy, wintry day in Kensal Green:
Among the rotting monuments and tombs
I share a literally lifeless scene.
A Pollyanna here would get the glooms.
A kindly band of relatives surrounds
The widow, a voluptuous brunette.
A sad, supportive sympathy abounds.
I stand alone and light a cigarette.
I knew the corpse, a man who had more fun
Than me, more wealth, more friends, more sex appeal.
He played it smart but honest, always won;
I got the losing end of every deal.
His luck ran out at forty. When he died
‘Good riddance’ was my private epitaph.
I set my face to mourning, but inside
I laugh a wicked schadenfreudlich laugh.

Private Pleasures by Nick Syrett
There’s a hint of Gauloises
Upon the upland air,
The mortar base-plate spacer’s mate
Is reading Baudelaire
From the emerald Fleurs du Mal
He carries everywhere
His hooded eyes are watchful
As we tab along the passes,
He likes to glean rare evergreens
And variegated grasses,
And store them in his scrim-net
For his water-colour classes
Once, between the barrages,
I saw him in despair:
A surprise in from Devizes
Had his bishop in a snare:
He played at chess by postcard
With a widow living there
The bugles softly summon me
Across the evening dew,
The comical harmonicas,
The keening cello too
Of 4818 Private Pleasures,
‘Bravest man I ever knew’

Wrong End, Right Ending by Bill Webster
My team was away in the distant North-West,
Away to a team written up as the best.
My lift let me down and the coaches had gone
So I went up by train, and I travelled alone.
I joined with the crowd as they surged to the ground,
Their ritual chants had a menacing sound.
In those days you stood in a great jostling mass
With a view, truth be told, more of heads than of grass.
The faces around me were drink-flushed and hard,
The man at my shoulder was jaggedly scarred.
They mostly had scarves tightly tied to their wrists,
Designed to stream down as they brandished their fists.
They roared their support when their lot took the field –
I had other thoughts but I kept my lips sealed.
The game proved no more than a chance for the crowd
To show life can be nasty, brutish and loud.
Two minutes to go, and still with no score,
They booed out their bile to have yielded a draw.
Then Wagstaffe, the master, crossed deep from the left
And Curran dispatched it, improbably deft.
A silence came down like the fall of a shroud;
My heart gave a leap, but it’s true I was cowed:
I dared not rejoice but I didn’t much mind:
I found the deep pleasure of joy that’s confined.