Poetry on its Competitive setting

I bit the bullet and submitted. For all my apparent uncertainty, I must have known that ultimately I would submit, as I hadn't deleted the emails reminding me of the closing date. And no-one responded to my Facebook post wondering if I should with any sort of active discouragement (I don't count appalling verse or terrible puns as active discouragement), so I did. Now to forget about it.

I would share the poems here that I submitted, but that would automatically disqualify them. So instead, here is a poem that I am unlikely to enter in a competition or to a journal (it's far too silly for anything as august as that!), but that you might find accessible. It needs to be read aloud in your most pompous voice possible.

Eulogy to My Tea

Oh noble wrap!

Full of lettuce and avocado,

except the bits that keep dropping out of the end,

and with enough smoked salmon in to challenge my sodium levels

and just enough mayonnaise to make it interesting

and probably to keep the lettuce from falling out 

along with the avocado.

Oh noble wrap,

just one of you is enough for a meal.

I tell myself that each evening

and each evening I mostly fall for it,

supplementing only with

a glass of something interesting

like a gin and tonic

(though never just *any* gin

and always that particular brand of tonic).

You were a good wrap!

Filled and filling,

made (and in the making

taunting to the cats who would always rather something different,

whatever is in their food bowl)

so quickly that you could have qualified as fast food

except your fat content is probably too low

and your fibre content too high

and let’s be honest, the basic quality of all your ingredients

is higher than most burger bars’ de luxe.

And now you are gone, 

lingering only as an aftertaste and a smudge of mayo on the cheek,

the plate barely in need of a wash,

the fingers definitely in need of a lick.

All that remains for us now

is to ensure that there are enough wraps defrosted for tomorrow

and that we haven’t run out of gin.