Apple and orange

In Competition No. 2544 you were invited to submit a shopping list in verse form, making the last word of every line a brand name.

Although I try to vary the competitions as much as possible, this is the second list-poem assignment in a row. As this was, at least in part, an attempt to respond to the market — consumer demand is high for verse-based comps, which seem to attract a larger entry than prose ones — I thought shopping and brands an appropriate theme.

Randall Jarrell uses detergent brand names to great ironic effect in the first line of his poem ‘Next Day’, in which a woman wanders the supermarket aisles mourning the loss of a younger self: ‘Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,/ I take a box/ And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens…’. And Pushkin liked to incorporate the champagne grandes marques into his work, Veuve Cliquot and Moët, in particular.

The bonus fiver this week goes to David Silverman, who follows in the footsteps of Pushkin and John Masefield; the other winners, printed below, get £25 each.

Wrinkle-cream of Nivea or Estée Lauder,
A bottle each of L’Oréal and Calvin Klein;
Then some ivory from Cargo,
Necklace by Hugo,
Fabergé diamonds and Bond Number Nine.

Stately Spanish Sauvignon, a French Veuve Cliquot,
Dip among the clarets for a Mouton Cadet;
Escargots au Boursin,
Truffles from Guylian,
Candles and roses and Grand Marnier.

Consignment of Kalashnikovs, AKs, Uzis,
Sidewinder Missiles, eight Chinooks and a Lynx;
Then a cargo of Semtex,
Tomahawk Cruises,
A hundred tonnes of napalm and six Russian
    MIGs.
David Silverman, with apologies John Masefield

My Mum sent me out to buy Sun-Pat,
But I got myself Snickers and KitKat
Instead, and some Mars and Doritos,
Maltesers and packets of Weetos,
A Twix and some Minstrels and Topics,
Fruit Pastilles and Chewits and Picnics,
A Boost and a Twirl and some Aeros,
Double Deckers and Revels and Rolos,
A Milk Bar, Fruit Gums and Yorkie,
A Time Out, a Flake and a Bounty;
To wash it all down, Orangina,
And Coke, Lucozade and Ribena.