Loss captured beautifully.
This poem was absurd, gritty, weird, clever. It made people cry but had a humorous touch. Some felt it was about grief, some about getting old, others about being taken advantage of. And for all these reasons and more, ‘Burglaries’ by Darren Deeks is the IS&T Pick of the Month for February 2024.
Darren is based in North West London and works in local government. He has a master’s degree in Creative Writing and facilitates the Manor Farm Poet’s workshop in Ruislip.
He has asked that his £20 prize be donated to the Trussell Trust.
Burglaries
You have been burgled.
While you were out with the dog,
a burglar made best use of that
yawning kitchen keyhole to spook
through tracelessly.
They were a ghost,
floating through your house,
with all the time in the world
to inventory your every item
while you threw sticks.
They were seconds gone
when you got back and in,
and the dog didn’t hesitate
on the threshold and there were
no alarms triggering concern.
What did they take?
An old National Rail ticket
and your fan assisted oven
and all your bedding; and
the missing ticket’s knocked you.
You are burgled again
the week later, the same way, losing
the brown leaves on an indoor palm
and the ancient family heirloom Bible,
and you only notice the missing foliage.
The next burglary happens
while you’re there at home,
the chain from your neck unclasped
the glasses on your face removed
and the lint in your pocket lifted.
And the time after that
you inertly watch a faceless shape
of fingers hands and heft roll rugs up,
take the radiators off the walls
and peel the socks from your feet.
You are being burgled endlessly
but never report it, even as you sit
in your emptying home, squinting,
gingerly treading ripped up floorboards,
calling the dog who’s out of earshot.
More voters’ comments included:
Curious and unpredictable
Because it is a heartbreaking piece of prose about grief. It made me cry and I’m not ashamed to say it. Because you don’t know what has been taken from you until a thing that you find absolutely sucks the joy from you for no other reason than because you associate it with someone who is gone.
I really love Deeks’ mix of humor and haunting; the poem teeters between funny, and chilling, and quite sad. A daring balance!
It’s left me intrigued thinking about memories and how they can feel like they can be ya
The absurdist angle
It’s gritty
The day to day content of the home mixed with the intriguing nature of the poem really resonated with me
It was cleverly written
I loved the original feel of this poem. It wrong-footed and perturbed me. It took my attention and held it. It was unexpected and satisfying. FAB!
Intense and moving yet with a humorous touch
Something about the emotion in it. Got to me a bit.
I read it metaphorically and it told me how people can be asleep to how they’re asleep to being taken advantage of
Very atmospheric
It makes me wonder how and why we sit, idly, as the things we cherish are taken from us by something we aren’t even sure of
It made me cry.
Very evocative and sad in a way that is very difficult to express.
To me it describes getting old and it made me think
I enjoyed the premise, the imagery and ‘the lint being lifted’,
The comforting sense of loss comes through this mysterious gem
How life changes, deaths, relationship break ups. Slowly life changes and that person who was such apart of your life disappears.
Oh ghostly and sad contrasted with the pragmatic throwing of sticks. Loved it.
Found the prose beautifully haunting.
Eerily beautiful
It starts off quite normal and then gets weirder as it goes on, a bit like Darren himself.
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THE REST OF THE FEBRUARY 2024 SHORTLIST
Night Market
When the night curtain falls,
the crowd start to assemble
as if drawn by magnets,
as if answering a scared call.
Neon lights go up along the narrow pavements,
illuminating the concentrating faces of food-sellers.
Under boiling noodle pots and roasting lamb skewers,
grey charcoal gives off a warm, red glow. Above it,
food aroma lingers in the sticky air.
Next to the stalls people sit around in twos and threes.
Their hands are waving, and their faces are turning red.
As food and alcohol slide down into the stomach. Laughter
becomes as strong as the rice wine they drink.
Late into the night, the stalls are busy
as ever. The clock hands slow down
and happiness is stretched thin and long.
Hongwei Bao grew up in China and lives in Nottingham, UK. He uses short stories, poems and essays to explore queer desire, Asian identity, diasporic positionality and transcultural intimacy.
*
The poet disregards the soup
she reencounters it on the hob
at a merry boil
not a slow simmer as instructed
borscht like bubbling blood
melds fingerlings, carrots, onions
in garnet guise
isn’t it enough
that she peeled the beetroot
palms, apron, worktop stained
so he can collect the children
with clean hands
Lara Frankena‘s poems have appeared in publications such as Magma, Oxford Poetry and Ink Sweat & Tears and were longlisted for the 2021, 2022 and 2023 Erbacce Prize.
*
Woof Woof
She came growling at me like a wolf,
muttering moonlight out of her throat
and blood is the future in my skin.
No more good girl. She kept moving
in her frightened threats, unstable pain
swallowed in an unspeakable way.
Like me with my quivering tail. Like me.
Kexin Huang (She/her) won a poetry prize of over 1,000 GBP awarded by The Chinese Writers Association, prizes awarded by The Poetry Society and is shortlisted for The Bridport Prize. Her poetry pamphlet, Unlock, is published by Veer Books.
*
Unbound
It was so quiet she could hear her hair grow,
heartbeat stretch across measures, nails twist
into mobius strips. She unlatched the window
so the hair had somewhere to go, tumbling
and snarling like water released in spring.
He came every day – until he stopped.
The patch of grass yellowed where he stood
in boots and shining coat, watching her locks.
So she stepped out of the window, following
the hair – dove like a clumsy swan, hands
outstretched to protect the melon of her head,
bird bones of her chest – hair pooling like a net
as she slips to the ground, folds into its nest.
NJ Hynes‘ pamphlet Tracking Light, Stacking Time (2023) was published by Live Canon and featured in the Washington Post. Her poems have appeared in Long Poem magazine, Magma, Mslexia, The Rialto; she’s held residencies in train stations and the Atacama desert. njhynes.net
*
Making a new picture
from another picture I cut a bright patch free
sunlit ochre that I loved
placed it high up in this picture
ditched the grim grounding and
from another picture salvaged the russet
which had warmed me
excised the violet shades
and added it to this picture and
from another picture swiped a nice cyan
tore the lemon horrors off it
and slapped it straight
in this picture and
from another picture saved
a green I need to keep
and planted it in this picture
swerving the scarlet clash and
from another picture recouped a ruby strip
which mattered and spliced it
in this picture and threw
the threat of maroon and
from another picture held on
to clear blue and knocked out the grey
swept the floor and now the glue is dry
I’ve framed this picture
Steph Morris‘ pamphlet Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow! is published by Fair Acre Press. He was awarded a DYCP grant for his visual poetry and is an RLF fellow at Greenwich University. steph-morris.com