We hold fonder memories of ancient times,

Because no memory is linear in the books.

 

As children, we were told that chronology was braided in a double helix;

That a man of our apparition was the formation of the world

Because the nebulae disk was moulded by a human potter

On a celestial wheel - turned in cosmic clay,

His hands muddy with the sin of creation; of thinking

That his coarse fingers held the secret of life; the right of death.

 

For who are we if not the creator of stars?

If we struck the tide and the ocean did not bleed?

We killed ox to make flutes; ended life to make art,

Believing that the sweet sounds that it whistled

Ran smoother than the warm blood that coursed through its veins.

Because the ox never saw the moon wax and wane;

Never heard the wind hum the same melody

That will soon surge through its hollow bones.

 

The grave near me grew garlic flowers.

I ripped them out; tore them with my teeth,

Like sharing a meal with the dead,

Because bare skulls are more jocund company

Than the bitter living, for death is a mausoleum

Combing through the layers of earth that

Stare at you with hollowed eyes as if to say;

 

“I was here when nebulae first coalesced into planets”

“I was here when life first suckled the thermovents under the ocean”

And they would sift through the cracks of your fingers

Because you were just as old as them.

 

There are six forms of Venus;

Venus; the planet,

Venus; the love goddess,

Aphrodite; the Olympian, ourania and pandemos,

Ishtar; the fertility goddess,

Astarte; the war goddess,

And the final form is what we make of her

Because when we pry open her naiscent clam,

All we can find along its edges are our fingerprints.

 

What is given of home when its bricks are made of more than yourself?

What is taken of life when it is given by another?

What is kept of creation when we slay the world in its wake?

Judge’s comments: An ambitious poem that conjures vastness across time and space, traverses the journey from child to adulthood, and asks big questions about life, death, and the act of creation. This evocative line embodies the last quality: We killed ox to make flutes; ended life to make art.