The honourable mention in Room’s 2010 poetry contest, judged by Jennica Harper.
The first word took root
quietly, self-sufficient oocyte
into morula, split
and grew new words,
a semiosis in the dark
liquid primordia of vowels.
Punctuated by
consonantal vertebrae:
the first somites
the little finger rays
which pointed towards
a sensual quickening,
the last revisions—
tongue buds and roots,
a daub of pigment on the eye
before the sluice of bloody water
and the lucent caul cast off
as meaning slipped away.
