2nd Place
‘Steadman’ by Penny Fearn
Dressed in peeling lizard skins,
he belongs in a crumbling tower – howling at the moon.
Hidden away with Beauty’s Beast
in plush-faded red rooms;
fat cherubs hold up his ceilings.
He scours his chambers for a happy-ever-after
or a face that’s better suited to the demands of his father.
Steadman cries in the folds of his fur-topped chaise.
Warring with his soldiers,
regimented in lines of one,
until they fall away to dusty floorboards,
under the ancient oak armoire.
Pieces forgotten, unnoticed in undergrowth,
swept away into the swamps
where he washes his fractured face
and shuts his eyes against a muddied reflection.
His father punishes him, for so many things but
also for the hunts and animals –
his father does not care for the smell of their mottled corpses,
lovingly tucked abed inside white cotton sheets.
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