ROGER ELKIN

Acting Blackbird

Second Prize Winner, SLQ Poetry Competition (April 2010) 

Dressed in jet like the villain

of a minor Jacobean tragedy

is nervy-bird, up-tight.

Sleek wheeler-dealer, steel-eyed

with slashings of smile,

lets no-one up-stage him:

muscles bullying in from the wings

ready for a fight.

Or trounces, automaton,

across patio and lawn choreograph

his birdbath-splashing-routine,

then diagonals away

to skulk among shadows,

swaggering beneath rhododendron

and beech-hedging,

his dagger of beak unsheathed.

Hopes he’ll get away with his asides

where he runs through leather-jackets

and makes the fat worm squirm.

Soliloquy is his forte:

adorns the morning chorus

with mellow flutings

till ratcheting the action to panic level

with his chattering patter

accusing all the world

of being on the edge of danger.

Dies off-stage,

unsung, unmourned.

© Roger Elkin 2010

CURRENT COMPETITIONS

Click on a link below to choose a Sentinel Literary Quarterly competition to enter

Short Story Competition (July 2010)

Poetry Competition (July 2010)

Sentinel Literature Festival Poetry Competition 2010

Top of page | Poetry Index

April-June Index
COMPETITIONS
DRAMA
FICTION
POETRY