Purgeatory – Jean Keeble

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition
1999 Crabbe Memorial Competition – Second Prize
Adjudicator: John Mole

Bones have a cool, carved brilliance
within the ebb and flow of flesh:
age, not appetite, is their undoing.
Oblivious to the excesses
of fitness, fashion and food
they remain slim yet curvaceous.
She’s wise, she knows that bones
are the true mirror of the soul,
and,

         lying,

purges herself nearer to perfection.
She has a criminal record.
Once, when visiting a natural history museum,
she leaped across a twist of rope
and sank her teeth into a theoretical petella
of the dinosaur Massospondylus,
an extraordinary creature which,
transcending nature, ate itself into oblivion.

Copyright © Jean Keeble 1999