By Robert Verdon
This poem was runner up in the Right Now Poetry Competition, judged by Maxine Beneba-Clarke, Amanda Anastasi and Benjamin Solah. Read the shortlist here.
cold day
in a book I come across
in the pleasant public library
there is an old photograph of a girl
about 15
with a big card hung round her neck,
the string looped callously
round her head:
the string wound about
violating her temples
number 631
standing in her home
looking stunned
waiting to be taken to the camp
I feel the pounding terror of her heart
on the card is the word Name
and a line, left blank.
I drop that line of enquiry;
even though it is winter
I am glad to get out into the sun.
Robert Verdon belonged to Aberrant Genotype Press in Canberra from 1998-2002. He came 2nd in the 2012 W.B. Yeats Poetry Prize. His books include The Well-Scrubbed Desert (1994), Her Brilliant Career (1998), and Before we Knew this Century (2010).
