The 57th Blake Prize

---

We will survive
on this bland harvest;
the blind tuberose
creatures
whose spindles
prickle deeper, richer soil.

Childless, not a governess
nor a teacher or a maid
I’ve had the time
to grow a garden

but I desire nothing
to grow, that will grow.
Here, there is so little fruit –
no cliff face of pork haunch
no heart of artichoke.

So I filled our muddy garden
not with celandine
or daffodil, but with cabbage
beans and turnips,
the new fronds soft
as an oesophagus.

Dragging a rake
behind, which left a trail
of serpentine lines
each morning I went to tend them.

Hushed as monks
the turnips grew –
their roundness
each day more pronounced
while the leaves
darkened, thickened
and shed their delicacy.
 
Now they are mature
I pull them by the hair
and land them
naked on my table.
I cleave the nose
that twitching organ

and hold the heavy sceptre
in my palm.

Its greenery shaved
the turnip is illuminated - bald
as a novice,
the deep bruises
of the crown
giving way to white
(glow-worm white)
which hums, neon
while the afternoon dark hunkers in.

Hot and softened
by boiling, these roots
will sustain us
through winter. I’ll remain
by the fire
though the chimney spits soot
and understand

that not much at all
divides the turnip
from the tulip – against the pale light
of evening both are reduced
to puppet outlines, flat and black

but, rip the vegetable
from its poor soil
(leaving a cavity
which collapses, dirt into dirt)
and you will see -
the turnip glows
with the light of god.

---

Chloe Wilson (23) is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne. Her work has appeared in Voiceworks, Eureka Street, Blue Dog, Poetrix, Inkshed, and Strange, as well as various university publications. She won the 2007 Ada Cambridge Short Story Competition and had a play produced as part of St Martin’s season of New Australian Work in 2001. In a brief and unglamorous publishing career she has been a journalist specialising in oil and gas pipelines and an editorial assistant working on finance and business stuff. She's currently one of the poetry editors of Voiceworks.