Editors of the workshop magazine are asked to identify their favourite three poems from their edition.

Julie Gilligan, editor of OUP 197, selected the following poems. Congratulations to the poets.

Always in my heart

They emptied the shed first,
I heard them breathing in my grandad's life
and coughing it out in vulgar jokes.
Suffocating his gentle tobacco with
their sweat and bacon rolls.
They carried his life away in a careless crocodile
of glue pots, door handles and towering jars of nails.
They dropped his treasured vase
and walked across the shards like so much rubble,
my grandma gummed to their boots.
After they had gone the shed was bare.
I said sorry to his shadow and whispered my love
to his favourite jumper, darned and abandoned on
the dusty floor.

Diane Schofield

The walrus and the elephant

 While sitting on the sea one day
 I heard a walrus sing
 an aria of Don José
 about the joys of spring.
  
 He sang of bees and flowers
 though all around was ice.
 He sang for hours and hours.
 It sounded rather nice.
  
 An elephant flew past apace
 trumpeting his woe.
 “That song” he said “is out of place
 and far too loud, you know.”
  
 The walrus glanced at him and said
 “It’s sad my heartfelt song
 fails to move your trunky head
 though I sing the whole day long.”
  
 The walrus and the elephant
 argued long and loud.
 Their voices were so vehement
 they attracted quite a crowd.
  
 A carpenter who wanted quiet
 told them to make peace.
 “That walrus needs a change of diet
 and then the noise might cease.”
  
 He took the walrus from the group.
 They walked off hand in hand.
 to where a little oyster troupe
 was dancing on the sand.
  
 The rest you know, a saddish rhyme
 of greed exploiting trust,
 the commonest unpunished crime.
 Alas, ’twas ever thus.

Barbara Cumbers

Impression of an autopsy

labelled
carcass split
groin to throat
to ear that takes
no note cage
protecting
lungs
and heart 
unlocked
as ribs are snapped
systems now removed and 
drawn with skill apart are laid
out side-by-side black blood lumps
to slab as disassociating hands peel
mask from skull crack its crown then
pluck the person-kernel from its
seat anatomic bric-a-brac complete
the wagered weight's confirmed
rashered now examined slice by
slice in search of maggot death
that sucked life from this
meat left it cold and foul
mortician's labour done
the belly offal-stuffed
is stitched the 
scrubbed corpse
hosed and dried
flesh made clean
hair made neat the
documented task's
complete now
shrouded white
the carrion's
despatched
to rituals
and tears
so worded-
earth may
strip these
bones of
tampered
flesh

Peter Meredith-Smith