Five Years Trying to Win the Flower Show Vegetable Animal Class
Highly Commended: a large baking potato –
its shape already reminiscent of the humpback whale –
set on a plate, surrounded by cabbage
shredded from the centre of the head
where its waves are tightest.
Eyes for a blowhole, and also for eyes.
Highly Commended: a crocodile
in cucumber, a sliced out wedge
for a gaping mouth, radish teeth and feet,
and winding down its curving spine,
a double crest of battlements, contrived
from cocktail sticks and arrow-heads of swede.
Highly Commended: a glossy purple eggplant
as the body of a bird of paradise,
wings from tiers of rocket, mint and carrot tops,
comb from sprouting mustard seed and dill.
Beak a nutshell, tongue a nut,
side-dish of summer fruits, its song.
Third Place: the coconut gorilla.
A corn dolly armature whose stooky thighs
and sloping head are covered
in the cracked off shells of coconuts,
the pile of the coconut fibres
precisely a match for the nap of gorilla pelt.
Highly Commended: an aquarium of fish.
Goldfish, guppies and angelfish whittled
from melons, peaches and artichokes.
Highly skilled engraving suggests drift and flurry,
fins and scales. A year’s work wasted on the system
which blows bubbles fat as berries from their mouths.
