The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Gareth Jones

Unreel

Strung along the street one morning
like low-level bunting: a mystery

to passing dogs, who nose along it,
this length of cassette tape looped and wound

across a maze of road to the park -
a contour, an isobar, brought to life -

straight for a huddle of trees where it rides
wire-taut around the branches;

something unwelcome, something wrong:
a crime-scene cordon in a country field

or a deep, dark string of gut gone dry;
it rasps like an army of plastic bags,

but cannot disclose the secrets it holds:
the dead notes of a discarded LP;

or some long-gone listened-to radio programme;
a declaration of love, confession;

someone’s last words, the half-deranged sermon
that could have saved us all; or simply

the pure grey noise of tape-head static -
the silence of something about to be said.

 

Gareth Jones, lives, works and writes in Wigan. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and has had poems published in various small magazines.  He works as an editor for a non-fiction publisher. This is his first taste of success with his poetry and he says he is overwhelmed that his poem was chosen out of thousands.