The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Runner Up - Carol Anne Zlotowitz

Carol Anne Zlotowitz was born in the 1950’s to devoted parents and had a poor but hilarious childhood. Life was free, filled with good food, fun and laughter. She later married an American who happened to love England and they opened a pet shop together in Nottingham. The combination of chatting to customers and their children, working with pet animals and going to school talks with these pet animals provided endless sources for hilarity. The combination of doing voluntary work with domestic violence victims and their children, reading 1st World War poetry and doing a gender (women) studies course at Uni made Carol realise she harboured a dark side. It emerged, outraged and angry and started causing trouble. It has turned this cheeky northern lass into a protestor and an anarchist, at least on paper. Every Tuesday she puts ‘Radiohead’ C.D.’s on, then writes about the oppression of women, the raping of our countryside and how all children should have a hilarious childhood.

The Moth

All night the house has been besieged.
Fear slides slick and yeasty down kitchen walls,
shouts bumping into chairs and pouncing
on the children tucked small within.
Striding his domain, father’s bulk looms over them.
Tension whistles casually behind the curtains
and rattles the window locks.
Mother leans on the sink, her silent roars are sucked
into the plug hole, to whoosh into the blackness,
and land in a drain among the soft, eyeless creatures.
They pay little attention. It is not their fear.
She can only whimper across the chasm
to the other hostages, as her mind becomes
a banquet for a slow, creeping fungus.
The whole disaster is recorded on the blank T.V. screen
as movements stop and time stands by.
Then a moth zig zags into the War zone
And a giant hand plucks it from the fierce air.
Is that shock on its furry face?
Glimpses of brown wings fluttering soft
between calloused fingers.
On huge legs the man strides to the table
Where a slice of bread, flat and innocent lays,
an invitation to be ravaged.
With quick precision two fingers lunge
into the cave of his hand and with face
twisted into a sneer, pulls aloft a wing.
Released, the wing twirls its final flight,
circling in front of entranced faces,
down into the white pillow of bread.
The girl squeals, throwing a hand against
her dangerous mouth.
The mother begins a low moaning chant.
“No. No. No.”
The boy glances at the man, copies the
cruel laugh.
And the poor mutilated moth is slung
Into its pristine tomb beside its wing,
accompanying it into the next life.
Watches the soft lid of its own death
come down, to become that life giver,
that daily sustenance, the sandwich.
Then the voice gruff with ultimate authority,
commands across the room to mother,
“Eat it”
And weeping, she eats.