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 Winning Poems from 2003 January • February • March
January 2003 First Place Bristled knees sloughing Through three-foot waves, broken liquor flasks, bronze coins, bone Dice, keepsakes of a papery world Move on the brine surface. What can you lie About with the water already Breeching your waist? But there are these moments- before The wrath is full, while the boat Is still swelling in the distance: To watch the species budge Their way to the hull and squeeze Themselves between the bowed boards- Knowing that you are at least Better than this desperation. To be proud of your godlessness And gather the entire scarred earth In one more good breath. There are the small Decisions: to move through the downward Current or stand a while as the only Motionless thing. To find a woman, already praying, And remember what passion you can. Or to pray yourself, legs akimbo In the ocean mood, salty tides Lapping in the throat, muffling tardy words. To recall the last few sins And if not to repent then to take A new pride in their purchased Taste. To open your eyes To the water, or to close them. Second Place The rivers have frozen, yet beneath the ice, turtles and fish swim in slow motion-- a silent ballet, undistracted by the jubilant world. At night, we skate beneath stars that pirouette closer. The motion above and below suspends us as if we were fish, struggling to breathe, struggling to keep from becoming stones. Last year, trying to escape the cold-- we snuck off to the barn, to hear the lowing of the animals. But the dark with its mossy warmth greeted us with another legend, and the green holly man startled us from his perch up in the rafters. This night, we are cagey, fearless. A flask of whiskey has made us bold. You tie up my laces, wrap a long red scarf round and round. You kiss my forehead, warm my neck with wool muffled breath. We skate through a skeleton of trees, sentinels to a deeper forest. We stop at a boulder we know by its graffiti, pause to take a swig, your eyes merry as you tell me to look up at the cobwebbed sky. Weíve dared each other before. I suck your bottom lip, taste the smoky malt. Birds mate in the trees, branches fill with eyes. Your arms are thorned as you pass the flask. Your eyes glow red. The trees rustle, your face scratches as you kiss me, whispering "Happy Christmas." I remember the bitter taste of you. You crush one berry in my mouth. Third Place When he awoke he had no memory of how the hand slid in, rummaged the muck of his insides, or how fingers pried loose sinew with a green-stick snap, then the sound the wrist made retreating like a mud stuck foot freed suddenly, as gore covered, glistening with gristle, drew out the bone. The bone lay in the sand beside him , it curve a mimic of a boar's tusk, and sensing it might be hungry, he piled a palm frond with papaya, guava, and Uula bark; laid it down to see if it would eat. He was drawn to it like one is to his own excrement knowing once it was somehow a part of him, and he got on all fours to sniff its length, probed it with a finger, sifted its hair, and knew now that he would have to feed it, listen to its yammering, even kill for it. The bone stirred from sleep, felt the heat of his body, the bole of his back and wedged against him wanting again the rhythmic didact of blood pulse, the slow contraction of lungs expiring; the wet dark. Honorable Mention My sister's hair, white-blonde milkweed silk, glides between plastic teeth. I promise her I'll get it right. I set curls to frame her face, like the ones I gave her on prom night. When she was sixteen and I was fourteen, I was weedy, awkward, and invisible. She made the boys stupid. Daddy used to watch her while she washed the dishes, blonde ringlets damp with sweat. He'd spit his chew in the sink, wipe the brown dribble on his sleeve and clasp her from behind. She'd wash herself until her skin looked sunburnt. I'd fix her hair. When she married Charlie I gave her an elegant updo. When he left her I polished her up so she could find a new man. She vowed years ago that I'd have to outlive her, because I was the only one who could get it right. She is tied into this chair, so she wont flop over, wearing a mask of foundation on her face, and on her wrists to conceal the slits - as if anyone could forget.
February 2003 First Place The sober gentleman drove home in reverse. When he arrived, the hole in his lot
between a modified taupe Ranch and a traditional pale yellow Ranch had begun its
tentacle-waving grab at the chilly air. Do I live here? the gentleman inquired
of himself, soberly. Like a gust he hissed: I do. The way it flails and reaches,
he continued to explore, it certainly has touched my wife already, my family.
The good work car strained to continue in the opposite direction, against the
squish of a bleeding foot in a work boot. I love her, them. I must save them.
The gentleman disowned sobriety in a desperate act, allowed his vehicle to pick
up speed. Rode the ribbon of road out of midnight's bright yarn box, through
harvest brown stoic freeze and sink of oven. Whipping these mesa'd flatlands he
might as well have been motoring in the right direction. The monk-specks dotted
the mountains, looked the same, coming or going. If the gentleman wasn't wasted,
he might have stopped for a spot of no-talking. Which he had nonetheless. His
communication required not another. Articulation left before him, behind him:
the scale of the no-longer sober gentleman now measured by his thought, how
alien it was. For what do we have? What might we trust but our differences, even
unto ourselves, saith the Whooey.
My handsome wife, my wedding kids, snug between the Ranches - what will become
of them? Now that I have disappeared into what was - where will they go? They
have everywhere to go, saith the Telephone-Guru, the Tinkling-Dreamcatcher, the
Internal-Combustion-Shoulder-Pat. Be not a-Fred, or a-Bill, or an orator. The
wasted gentleman continued testifying his satisfying Yabba Dabba Doo sans As and
Os. I must save them, Ybb Dbb D Ybb Dbb D. Speedometer still too promising, he
floored it in reverse on the straightaway. His bloody foot sang dry hymns, and
crackled. Go man go, chanted the sacred jackrabbits. Yes Yes, hissed the cool
lizards.
Just before he ran out of gas many miles from his lot, and the promising massage
of dark tentacles had whipped away his wife, had said Now Now to his children
and watched them as they slept, the tired gentleman's hungover red eyes fell
upon a glorious hitchiker. She paced and joked to herself, half-carrying her own
lot. She wasn't going forwards or backwards, only pacing. The glowing gentleman
said Hop in, and she did. The car faced west, motionless, and their sunsets were
now balanced.
The next day the gas came and the car drove away. Where is our lot? the glorious
hitchiker cooed. It is over there, saith the Sparkling Wheel. Way over there. Second Place I fall asleep with Tennyson to dream of Titian angels; dream I've joined with Gabriel, pregnant with giants grown tired of little men, for if I take the farthest reach, hind's feet on high places, surefooted without justification, beauty becomes what pleases without explanation. Until then, a thousand dunes to walk, in the tremor of plagues poured and with your slaves, to exhaustion-- no deliverer come. So let the Cairene women ululate; let witches curse-- I've come for the seer; my want: The promised land. Anoint my breasts with vanilla; jasmine between these thighs. Kohl-line the lapis of my eyes. Brush my hair with olive oil. Coax the cobra to dance with the asses of men; mix bone and seed, stone and spice to heal, then wake me in the Dead City, poisoned beneath gray laburnum trees, to see the skyline dome and tower slend against a backdrop cerulean deep, that I may believe, cynically drinking from the beggar's cup an old, diminished man has given, to say: Illusions end. Third Place her arms, she said, were wire the dress hanging from her would dry if only I wasn’t rain it was I who stuck my finger into the sky and replied, I was a paper bird that rain would pull down from the sky if only she wasn’t the wind Honorable Mention Coiffured women are slender birds enfolded in silk wings. Their faces have been dusted with rice powder - white with small scarlet lips, finely drawn black eyebrows. Walking with the grace of snowy egrets, they bend their long necks and tempt lovers who dare not touch except with flowery words. Honorable Mention It rises from the bottom or maybe it descends from above sometimes you see it come in from out there floating along the surface of the Bering Sea a twist on deception in the noiseless freeze all I hear is the motion of the water against the boat and the fog horn that shatters the muffled effect of molecules packed tightly together bone cold obscures my reason unable to control the chattering of my teeth pulling the nets into the boat I convulse the line slices into my fingers icy rage is never planned it just happens like this thick winter fog that swallows you alive leaving no clues to which way shore lies Honorable Mention Forecast: Snow squalls. Windchills below zero. The dead of winter. Under my down comforter, I shiver. I can't get warm. I didn't hold him. A technician cradled my cat as they killed him. The vet assured me it wasn't the wrong decision. I hung up the phone. Another loss. She says the words like a bad actor, traps me in an obligatory hug. I donít want her stiff arms around me. I shrug off her mothering. I keep using the same metaphor over and over: Like a baby Rhesus monkey denied of real parenting, I learned how to cling to wood. I waited until his brain was dead. I waited until I was sure he couldn't hear me. Then, like a coward, I whispered: I love you, Dad. Goodbye.
March 2003 First Place So much more patient with intricacy, even than in my youth, when I won a reputation for complicating anything I touched, I gather the details of every landscape, the flakes of paint on every abandoned barn, the sculpture of each weed that grows in the roadside ditch, the precise way the tear in the banner shows the sky, sings with the wind, fading billboards with puzzling messages about agricultural lubricants and God, and signs offering bulbs free to those who will plant them in hope. Second Place why you punish me? Tic tock, goddamn clock - make it stop. Flesh, blood and dimension: absurd restraint, dainty comments flutter fine tea china constraint savin' it all up for sunday mass relieved 98% of the mafia black threaded, beaded -- led through the e-zine, bored yet note that this round is completed. there's things the butcher said to mamma' room temp converts circus freaks to petrified wood. not standing or sitting 'round rotund proverbs So this is the life? So that is your love? Sew this mouth shut when truth multiplies multitudes ignorance -- first, they come for second tries. Nah. Nope. bit of brazen clique, ya’ stutter door jammed up with your foot that kindly felt out our lips. Flesh, blood and dimension *yawns* Ain't no good for ya' here, little girl. Go on -- git trailers and wagons is comin' you don' wanna' be next number in line is 42. fingers gnaw fancy black keys feign a little interest at the left bank backlash -they've served the best- gods dropped to their knees when she knocked god's dropped the children when mamma said ain't no good goin' back. giddyup, git along spur your stallion -sing alone- Third Place A pilgrim loves the road. Or rail. She thinks the train more romantic. The swing and click spills stories From a lonely widow about the old days in a kibbutz. The clack sways theories Within hours the universe is settled. Nowhere to be but here, Till she’s there. Then it’s one foot before the other to Learn the secrets Of gondolas that skim canals, Castles that stand firm on windy moors, Birthplaces of voices like Dickens and Mozart. Turbulence rises, though, It bubbles up a deeper secret; That mankind is often unkind. Within wire fences of a puzzling locale Such as Dachau, Electrified by her own terror, She laid to rest her pure trust in goodness. On the trail again, When confusion of conundrums Steal sleep and borrow time, Some bit of beauty pierces clarity into reality. Maps are unfolded, Destinations chosen, A new journey is begun with wide eyes and curious strains To seek secrets that please a pilgrim. Honorable Mention I think of an egg. A loon's offering tied to the center of my breasts like the eye of a Cyclops. Always seeing, always looking somewhere. It is this egg I think of, carried the summer I was ten with ten thousand others buried deep in the pockets of my ovaries, waiting. Waiting like a child for a bird to fly out of her chest; a gryphon, a phoenix or some other magical beast. These are the things I remember; this and the sour smell of my shirt after possibility had died. How I drew the needle across the center and poked a hole, blew out the placenta like the tongue of a lizard and the clear line which held death. I painted the white shell in blue, then red drew small flowers, tied their stems into intricate patterns, carefully, in case I was wrong.
April 2003 First Place with a nod to Gerard Manley Hopkins i. if i pull a thick metaphor out of a thin hat, will you bring your ruler? ii. measure this: i slide down the curve of your spine and whisper Silk Smooth Paper (thickness of metaphor, 385 gsm) i tap the skin there, press keyboard-button bones (size of metaphor, Lucida Sans 14 pt, Bold) and make the word dapple --i'm about to express how your skin is the sun peeking through the trees as seen fragmented on bare geography-- iii. someone said it's all about contraction; making a smaller simile. For example: the long version: Wait, wait for me, will you? Adventure tells me I have to go. I'll be back. Stay. Like An Obedient Pet. Stay. And if you close your heart to all the others, I'll come back Like A Treat, Like A Fat Chicken Biscuit. the short version: Be my Penelope. iv. Aristotle didn't speak of thick or thin, just metafora-- giving you a name taken from someone else-- You are my Ted (as in Hughes, Poet-Man-God; height of metaphor, over 6ft tall), my Sweet thing (as in John or chocolate, weight of metaphor, 90 kilos or 250 grams, respectively). Diomedes didn't speak of size, either; but of shifting meaning from proper to improper, for the sake of: a. beauty (your dappled sunlight smile warms my brow) b. necessity (i frame you, my dappled-red Picasso, in the tortured gallery of my mind) c. polish (your whisper, dappled promise of early afternoon in the park) and d. emphasis (the dapple-drawn puzzle of your heart) v. sometimes i'll speak metaphors you won't notice, so familiar by now (you're my Araki bud; my red my red my red my red my red rose; will love ever bloom in the desert of your heart?), they must have been vivid once but they've shriveled; melted fat into thin common bones. Death does that. vi. watch me pull a thick metaphor out of a thin hat, call me poet and love me for it. Second Place Even after all these years, the women are still screaming, fingers transmuted into sausages or sardines that won't stop the babies from falling. Body parts mix with those of bull and stallion: eyes flared, hooves, horns, teeth, faces ripped in two. The bellows of animals become human. Third Place There was little more in the world she wanted at that moment, than for her body to turn into the twelve white pigeons flying above, whilst he, the bedded chrysanthemum, would watch her. Honorable Mention When I was a little girl, undressing, I always turned the face of Jesus to the wall. Hanging backwards, he was spared, saved the sight of a girl's naked frame. It was like turning off the lights in my body. Today, on a date in the Renaissance wing of the museum, under the gaze of St. Sebastian's marble statue, I turn my face to the wall. The arrows in his bloodless chest are lead-tipped lady fingers. I'm wearing a gold-lace bra from Victoria's Secret. I regale Syed with many tales from the secret lives of saints. They say that St. Sebastian was the Emperor's lover, I tell him; that he brought more than just bread and wine to hungry Christians, men imprisoned behind Roman walls. I remember when Uncle Lee left to have a sex change operation. Auntie Kyla took all of his pictures down, nailed up pictures of the saints instead, but the walls mumbled in shadows during the daytime saying you can weep and play the blues till' the cock crows, but he ain't comin' back here to roost, honey. Truth told I am more than flight to find myself facing Syed as he looks into my eyes whispering, zohar. Like a dream by Al Hazen, I face the tender tug in my pelvis, the blood as it rushes down, down into my shining copper cup of wine. Honorable Mention I could write how I’m amazed at the yellow of spring’s first daffodil. But that would be too exact, untrue. In fact, it’s just the first I notice, looking up. It catches my eye, the bud not yet fully open, poking through a layer of dead leaves. And I’m not amazed by it, but more by the consistency of things, the plodding renewals of crabgrass, cockroach, dog droppings. Of a yellow flower. Younger, I might have stomped it, angry at everything then. But it would take sixteen steps to reach the garden’s edge, and sixteen back again. My anger’s burrowed deeper than a seed. Besides, a neighbor now is out walking his overweight dog as he does every day, and will continue to do until one of them gives up. We wave without speaking. Muscles and brain, as if saying - I see you, I don’t see you. Honorable Mention She tells me the name of every bird in paradise She thinks the more I know of birds the closer I will get to flying The days have turned to ochre washed with light, faded with truth And we are learning by braille of the things we cannot see It is hard for me not to pause by your side and reach for the comfort of your body Is there any other comfort you can give me? You are bleaching your dreams in buckets of time and I am trying not to notice how blue makes your hands go white Honorable Mention I recline on pillows in my small wooden boat; a sharp tang of pipe smoke wafts over dark water. My wife stands in the bow, watches fireworks falling like flowers onto the bridge. I will remember this night. My brush will dredge thick ink; in energetic strokes the words will be painted on silk-threaded paper. A WOMAN'S ROBES BILLOW AS A WATERFALL My apprentice shall set my tribute into a scroll which will hang as a lone ornament. There will be preparations for tea, boiling of water, silence, measurement of green powder, whisk and raku cups. One will hand the offering to another, take small sips, find peace in ritual. MOON SHUDDERS BEHIND PINE BOUGHS Under blankets my wife whispers, Yugiri. I wind my arms around her delicate form and put my cheek to hers. You're my beloved, I say, you have given me my voice.
May 2003 First Place i don't know of any woods like this
around here now
but when we were kids my brothers and me
got lost in some woods
behind our uncle atlee's house woods
that looked all right when we went in
but all of a sudden
changed when we found out we didn't know where
we were or which way to get out again
woods that kept
getting deeper and deeper
and richard like usual decided he had got bit
by a snake a hoop snake this time
he said
and he could feel
the poison which didn't spread near as fast as a copperhead
more in one place like when you touch
a waffle iron to see if it's hot
and what was the use of keeping
on walking he said
if he was dead anyway
and he just sat down and refused to go any further which
was his usual game of somebody had better
carry him or he was a goner
well fuck that
bud said i aint carrying your dead ass nowhere
go on and die see if i care crybaby
but just then a owl sailed right past us close
as my arm
and richard was up and running like a shot
and we had to tackle
him and bring him down saying
fool fool
that will just make the poison go faster through you
so without a knife to lance him
we had to take turns with him on our backs
because a person can lie and lie and there will still be
that one time when it's the truth
but while i was taking my turn
it got darker
and darker through the trees till you couldn't hardly see each other
in front of you
and richard had either fell asleep on my shoulder or else
he was in a coma
i thought and i had begun to imagine what it would
be like if he was to die like that
with me carrying him
and i could see the funeral with the rain and the umbrellas
the way they do it in the movies when
they really want to make you feel it the worst
and i told bud
and he said to hold still so he could feel for a pulse
but if richard had one it was awfully faint
bud said
and he shook richard and said richard richard look there's mama
which brought him around thank god
and he raised his head trying to see through the trees
saying yeah i can see her he said
and he let go with one arm and pointed out in the darkness
look look over yonder he said
and it was true there was somebody or something moving through
the trees like ghost lights floating
and bud got down
and started to throw leaves all over his self trying to hide
but it was too late
they were floating closer and closer
dark figures with puff balls of light all around
and jesus this deep voice all of a sudden said
what chall doing way out here
and then we could see it was a wagonload of cotton behind two mules
and up on top was this colored tenant farmer
and his family that we had seen
one time at barber junction when uncle atlee said
that nigger owes me twelve dollars
and bud was still
covering his self with leaves whispering don't say nothing
and richard hugged me tight with his legs locked around me and his eyes
shut playing dead
but somebody had to take charge
so i said
i said if y'all take us outa here my uncle atlee will give you
twelve dollars
which made the colored man narrow his eyes
where he said you get a figure
like twelve dollars you just make that up or is your uncle atlee just love
to give money away
well i knew how to talk to people like him i might not of been
but twelve but you couldn't help
but learn
if you watched everybody else in this world
take it or leave it i said
twelve dollars that's three dollars a piece that's twelve aint it and the man
stared down at me like they do at the grocery
store when you
handle the candy bars and they know you aint got a dime
git up
he said and let out a rattlely cough and shook his head
and i lifted richard up
and pulled bud out of the leaves
and we sank down in that big load of cotton with the whole family
around us
must have been ten kids
with their hands scabby and bleeding from the cotton
and their big mama
who wore a straw hat and a pair of sunglasses that had one
of the lenses missing which would have looked funny only she had
this beautiful sad smile
like even when she was happy
she was thinking about something else
and her husband
said something to the mules and we went lumbering off and he never
even turned around when he said
y'all know how far you come you come ten miles through
them woods it's a wonder
you not dead
little city boys like you i be damn i just be
damn
he ought to know better than let chall run around loose
in the middle of nowhere
well okay then mister twelve dollars it is only don't say nothing
till after i'm gone
and then you tell your uncle atlee
alonzo
said to just add it on to that other twelve i won't never
get back from him either
Second Place Nothing in your letter about coming, about being on top of a cloudless day. Nothing, even, about being on a mountain side, not quite on top and dreaming relevance, reasoning politics, deals, maybe. Dirt and moss in my nostrils as you fuck me. Maybe there. Control and controlled. Third Place Mother gave her liquor once, and her pupils became black sunflower seeds bobbing in water bowls. an empty bird swing. mimicked laughter from the bottom of her cage at night. Honorable Mention An Ikebana class: the woman's nun hair cropped to her ears, her hands floating and sure. Her voice seemed apart from her, as if it needed to be summoned from the next room, the words handed to her like flowers. The vase waiting, water waiting to be filled, when she began, a sliver of skin showed between her shirt and slacks, showing her stem bent and smooth. The movements like a dancer, her poses like a bird, she worked, her balance exceptional. She reminds me -- Mrs. Batastini's hands were capable, with nails just even with the tips of her fingers. Her natural expression was more serious, but her unexpected smile lit her eyes to honey. She made me feel my own careful potential, that my bloom was exotic. We learned cirrus, cumulus. -- She moved like this, as if praying. The monk well known for this art, he gathered the red lilies from beside the rails, the blooms burning and unwelcome in everyone else's hands. Witness his vase, the bronze shoe, Victorian and open to the toe, holding the forbidden. These women, this monk, each one points back to another like the feather in a woman's hat. Who holds the leaves just so. Who names the cloud. Who teaches how to see the sky.
June 2003 First Place * One Leg of a Return for Janice Kijenski As I leave: the old moment’s cathedrals, rubble beneath a blue sky’s supposed perfection. What was Krakow’s sorrow like, when it still knew sorrow existed? And should it matter to us, who haven’t ever lived here? Like someone digging clam flesh from the shell with a little fork, something’s pulled from your belly. The soul? In another location a maple leaf flutters into the distance, a disconnected thought on the American asylum’s grounds toward which the cops drive the ostentatious rebel, 1964. Months later while you play the piano he hasn’t heard yet, the asylum’s flowerbed of withered tulips mocks him, hiding boy-like in the nurse’s shadow while the world closes in around him. Eventually he leaves the place forever. That of course was then and this is now. The silence still converses with itself - yesterday in Srinagar in Kashmir, today here, tomorrow near Brush Run. Moments from one zone or another: a child’s legos with which I build a history of mornings just for you. They are what I am. Feel the light. Gentle as your husband’s breath upon your neck, day arrives. * Fall Outing The swan’s soaked belly, a secret, rises from the pond in a chaos of beating wings deaf Ephram doesn’t hear. Trees, throwing flakes of burning ash into the air, die as he watches. When I walk him home to Janice’s, we pass the old papermill, one wall a pile of rubble. The chill wind blows harshly along the rowhouses. Ears reddened by silence, his head aches. * Beyond Brush Run Near the civil war cemetery, apples rot in an orchard not far from where doe and fawn bound through cold rain into the underbrush, hides soaked with the impalpable. Having lost track of Katherine and not knowing how many years ago she died, I look through the broken window at a corner in which I once passed out, drunk. When I came to, she asked “Do you understand now?” while spaghetti boiled in the kitchen at the dirt road’s end where my father would one day stand in the doorway, hat in hand, awed by the old woman telling stories about the storm-swollen Arno as the rain then as on so many other days and now beat roof and walls, drumming but not loudly enough to drown out the fox with fractured leg yelping in the steel trap in the silence between two words. Only today do I finally understand the drenched soil’s smell, as the earthworm’s bristles penetrate bright dark. In another place where she once showed me a dead swan coated with oil, I sat on a flat roof in my soldier’s uniform and talked with her at dusk. That was the year DeGaulle almost fell from power and Brown’s leg was blown up in a paddy north of a mangrove swamp where the water’s silence like a stranger’s held breath at the border of a small town at night was louder than the unknown’s prelude played on the piano by Katherine’s friend’s daughter in a parlor years later. The rain froze that evening as she played, then turned to snow, which by morning was knee-deep anywhere you walked. * Dusk Mist Years Ago Where the branch juts out from the maple trunk, it disappears into mist. The ducks on the pond, noise minus bodies. Even I, walking here, am only an absence’s motion, to anyone more than a foot away. Still, I thumbtack a message for Katherine on the gatepost of the horses’ grazing field. What will it mean to her? She doesn’t know yet that I’ve returned. Or from where. In all respects, I’m the mother words desire, except I abandon them when they’re born. Years later, their crying haunts me. Tonight I listen to ducks that aren’t there. You whispered once, “Tell me who you are.” I answered, “I’m the message that I leave.” Mist touches stone. That sound is me. * Connelly, 1973 In the rain in the meadow east of Katherine's house the wind pummels aster stems. Leaves matted on his boots he trudges through soaked grass down the slope. Where the trail cuts through the woods at dusk he disappears. Later, the wind dies down. The rain stops. No stars tonight. Or moon. * Miles from Indian Caverns Under the fern, tomorrow’s absence. A raven’s feather, like the possible, lies on the path. Time: fat with undergrowth and burrs stuck to fur. From this I reconstruct the wolf’s warm breath, paw prints in snow. The mind, owning no bow or gun, follows. Later with one quick move, a flash of animal fury, it kills its prey with its teeth. Wind hisses over creek rocks and through dead weedstalks. Hearing the unclear clearly, I find beyond the thicket a shack, falling apart, snow on the floorboards, and sit on a dented bucket, already hungry for another meal. * Wednesday Night As part of the return, I fed the stallion an apple in the stable. More than haysmell brought me there, brushing my cheek against its mane. Listening to the sound from the east meadow of mist touching pond, I remembered Srinagar, nothing else. A building burned while a woman scratched for food in a stony place. Thick as afterbirth, animal slobber dripped from my hand. Later, the noise of ducks flapping wings. No, that was different: a year ago, one morning. I awoke. You weren’t there. But she was. The woman grubbed for edibles in the dirt inside my head. Behind her, an explosion rocked the city. I could have saved her but while I wrote my dispatch, she disappeared. * Season Where my fingers end, the air says nothing. An absence of paradox begins. Oak bark’s rough feel. Leaves rot among broken field stalks. Prophecy is like this: a simplicity so simple it’s complex. Old Connelly, name carved here in stone, decayed long ago, but now his rot rots also. A cold front comes in. The wind shrieks along Smith Mill Trail. What clarity. The pond turns to ice, the night is nice. Second Place In my dream I wore two pockets around my neck. The first opened to a daughter made of clear petals. She was air floating through our fingers. I named her yours and we were happy and if we shaped our hands around her head as a cradle we almost felt the soft spot on her skin. The other pocket broke into two sons the first healthy, screaming like a man the second, his mouth stuffed with blood like a child born when I was awake and there was no way to close my eyes. But in this dream, he is mine and I remove the dark mucus from his mouth. He breathes, a small fish begging for air. I desire to give these children to your body like rain to dry land. Yet in this place I know what is yours and what is not. I nurse two boys on the tips of my breasts while you rock the air with a child who bears no weight. Third Place I have let myself go, ballooning, I drag my new intellect in tow like a cross child. I see She is as thin as ever, plucking strings of a narrow-necked guitar with articulate fingers, fast like wires cut whilst live, stopping only to sip green tea as our conversation lurches like my rosé wine, full-bodied- red, if angled slightly. I do not remember her being far too grandiose for me but I see there is still common ground: we wring our hands secretly at the slack soft belly of a spider in the grass. Honorable Mention "when the one who's faithless has nothing more to say and the silence is terrifying since you must choose between one or the other emptiness." Stanley Plumly We take the bigger half. We might cut it in two and try to make them even, but we take the bigger half and then we look to see who saw. Even as the sun sets I take big gulps from the garden hose, keeping the coldest water for myself. It's terrible, the way we do the things we do, like children poking holes in frogs to see the bits run out into their palms; it's us and God, who's overpoked enough. We gather stones and bitch about the dust at night, the cold air of the day keeps up and takes the bigger half. There's the kid they cannot tell is strung out half the night and still he lets his heart beat on as if it matters when he lives and dies. Honorable Mention Abuela Carmita was educated in a beige convento where dour-faced monjas taught her all about pudor: a senorita had to bathe in a refajo and always say ave marias when washing certain unmentionable parts. When she married Argimiro she retained the strictures handed down by her diosito and never made love in daylight lights out under cover of long sheets and prim long virginal payamas ten children well conceived amidst much groping in the darkness freshly arrived from La Habana she went to the supermercado with canvas bags, precursor to ecological concerns, saved all cans from salsa de tomate for planting of gajitos de malanga all rubber bands in one large Café Bustelo washed out and aired, soil taken from the neighbor's garden, you did not spend hard-earned centavos on things you could get free, you did not do certain unmentionable acts with your marido that was for putas and their like in bares and what dios joined you could not sunder, el matrimonio was forever, a promise given was a promise kept, through years of my abuelo's dancing through the carnavales with a rubia or a pelirroja she kept her vows, except for kisses given to the television set when Tom Jones came to sing and gyrate... she wanted to learn inglich to become a citizen paid each of us a nickel for vocabulary, learned to say pehnseel, plees to write out her notes to my abuelo, plees plees no more mujeres, no more smoking cigarrillos, no more juiski in the evenings, but when the cancer took him, 52 years of matrimonio took their toll, she talked to him each night while watching her novelas on the tele, shared new palabras in the inglich language, said plees plees pless Argimiro plees come back to your esposa
July 2003 First Place "You are and you aren't a part of the larger whole around you. You form friendships and your friends die. You dream and your dreams die." -- Caryl Chessman, executed May 2, 1960, San Quentin It is always night at the ocean in my mind, with a moon so full, it hangs too low in the picture frame sky like overripe fruit, burdensome for the branch. Take a bite. Be saturated with the taste of residual heat and monoi oil. It is always winter in the tropics in my mind, with a fan so large, it moves too slow in the little thatched hut like molten rock, born to form this place. Close your eyes. You are the root of breadfruit and tiare tahiti. There are always guests at the table in my mind, with tales so bold, they grow too wild in the dining room like uncivilized weeds, increasing in complexity. Drink your tea. Follow them to the core of the black-lipped oyster's womb. Beyond the bars of my cage I hear them talk, the guard in the grease-stained shirt to the man with one gold crowned tooth. 'Good thing this ain't Los Angeles,' he says, 'They're so used to pollution down there, I've seen 'em last in the gas five minutes, maybe more.' It is perennial night at the ocean, perpetual winter in the tropics. The people-they always come to tell tales at my table. And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom. Second Place My father was not a highwayman, executioner:
a line cast into the Potomac, boy, do you like catfish?
Like a stone or
earthenware body
marble eye-pits,
the man did not tilt. I thought he had died
or fallen to sleep, upright, totem-he was a painted man,
conceived in browns, olive drab; adorned to the pier
while I snubbed the wind.
I had seen this
on many nights:
the aztecman in hunt-
I had been prey, ready to make sunspots, sunblood,
though the whiskers and river eel proved better
than I.
My father was not the moon, pulling water from coves:
Texas passage to Appalachia, he was a line of silk or
taut leather-
boy, this is where life goes, on a hook, on a hook.
I am a man with a curved steel spine,
years later, in the river, in the river.
Third Place At night, my father's boat is strung with lanterns. I give him a basket of pears, three dumplings wrapped in paper. He presses his thumb to the top of my head for goodbye, enters the Li River with his flock of tethered cormorants. They fly out on their leashes, kites flickering against limestone. The avu swim close, attracted to the bob and sway of lanterns. The cormorants swoop, pluck, swing the fish in pouchy beaks, thrash against the wooden collars that circle their throats, trying to swallow, swallow. My father reels the birds in, pulls the fish out of their mouths. In the morning he walks to the village and I ride my bicycle. He laughs when I stretch my arms out, then flap, caw and squawk, stretch my neck to one side, then the other, like the cormorant escaping its collar. Honorable Mention What Panther... What Panther stalks beneath the earth... M. Kathryn Black In the panther's last moment, when the dull earth erupts from under the living skin, when, in the dark of the sky black roses grow, raining their petals on the dark pavement, we will go to the zoo you and I, to the cage of the earth to the glassed-in enclosures, to the drill in the jaguar's eye (no more cages Ted Hughes, but the lions are yawning) to the place where we save what is left, you will find if you walk past that place, past that heel on the floor and the restless turning-- past the crowd and the look on its face, past that vision of God and horizons churning my face in the glass of your door, my face and the glass, and the roses coming.
August 2003 First Place A gewgaw moon dangled. Midnight over green shallows, sluice, and salt meadow. The tide standing. I went there alone, to the pools where fry and smelt lie. I found the clammy creature. Hair tortile, wreathed and red; belly speckled madder rose. Around her, lily leaves all splits and tongues. Smeary carp sliding under a gliddery skin, horse-bruised pink, orange and white. One fish circled into its quick black eye. Its circumference a baby's arm. Bladderwrack pricked, gullies purled. She had no pulse. I believe I heard a cry. I am sure we hadn't met. I deny these teethmarks are mine; my mouth is clean. I swear I did not use a blade. The sealskin found beneath my bed; the bones, the charms, the bridle. The letter from the New Jersey girl to whom you will say I once was wed, with whom you will say I swam. The depraved gape, the scarlet gash. I have no knowledge of these, the blue eyes in my flask. Second Place Grass spills over patio stones, stained metal chairs, a leaning table. The empty house fills the fading frame with clean cuts. The woman leads me with the leash of her grin. I knock rust off the latch. The knife and I ease in through the window, through the frame. Gouged hardwood stains our soft feet, brown and red. She wiggles toes, she kicks the tumbling dust, draws shingles from the quiet fireplace. Rust on the poker, rust on the hand, the ash rouses scents that mingle and ascend. The hanging chandelier above. Crystal daggers. She reaches, turns one over and over. Light cuts through the subject, joins and breaks. The point burns my weighty palm, reddish- brown and stained. Rust on the hand. The frame. Third Place You are Bali. -the-wallace-line-the-wallace-line-the- I am Lombok. ***** Let us identify the facts. 1) Sometimes we almost touch a. ships ply the strait 2) We never touch a. ply, ply, ply 3) Touching doesn't matter a. they carry mail b. cinnamon 4) Around here, stuff explodes a. islands b. mail bombs c. tropical secrets ***** Is it all about genetics, se x ual disconnect? Paradise flycatcher, woodpecker, polecat vs. honeyeater, cockatoo, and wombat? ***** (insert: eons, inchings/ insert again: ages/ again, insert. O!) ***** This is not a relationship. Here geology mugs evolution with a slow gun, its chambers clogged by continents & discontent. ***** Tsunami!!! Grab your shit & elevate. ***** You used to wear your little tectonic number, and try to subduce me. Now it's just lava, lava, lava. ***** S of Su- matra another Krakatoa smolders. ***** Clean your gun. Grab your shit. Stop the mail. Tomorrow, after java, we board The Beagle. We rhumb-line it to the archipelago and scream: evolve! Honorable Mention Dogs bark in the distance, crickets thrum by the door. All the night makes free in these ramshackle rooms every portal open to a breeze. Moths cluster to my lamp, the guardian pine leans toward the gate of my undoing. Here the sky meets my sense of purpose in a storm. Earth drinks up like these may be the last drops falling. Tiny trees lined out among the flowers strive a root deeper than regret, more resilient than this thin resolve. Anything could wander in... or wander out. A house is just a shell, a spot of shade. No protection from what lies within, no respite from the past. No answers for the future, only open windows, sprung hinges, drawers yawning from their hold like beggars' palms Fill me! Put away your longing folded tight like linen, closet all your fears. These floors creak as if the very boards were aching for release, pulling nails to rise, swing high above my primal grasping, paint the sky with a flailing one could almost take for wings.
September 2003 First Place I would sense borders,
the towpath’s past shouldering drays.
Before indiscriminate Sunday hordes, a black headed gull follows
the plough for leather jacks; in close-up
should be chocolate brown.
Land also.
I forfeit strict scent edges,
my toes neckéd, strake the frass of spilling ants,
pre-tense their winging.
Hollow stalked cow parsley straggles,
I struggle after a laudity. A plover, its lapwings broad,
momentarily folds, nests in
marsh. Where do I start?
In a gaggle whose moulted feathers grounded
them, now grown to skein.
Coots come out, white, white, white bobs from reed beds.
A mute swan. Special spot. Skis. Stop.
What quest me?
There are barn swallows in agile flight.
A spring of teal spike vertical. My busy life, up.
I should like down:
the 3-spined stickleback in mud safe.
Then if not through specialness,
then plainness and fecundity.
A grebe dives into its rest of rotting vegetation,
does not protest young, carried a’back.
A rare swan mussel, bouldered by a slight drought,
must filter 30 litres a day.
Responsibilities, ripples.
My soul, a freshwater shrimp, hiding under a stone. Yes, I should
like down.
Furrows from rowers’ burrowing paddles
their wide shoulders no doubt
their breath harmony with each others’.
I would frill tail, know fins, risk choke
vow violence aperture dive-back
my fingertips a stipple of bubbles below surface
mistaken
I
become barbel, lashing, dangering the weir,
urban kayaks steer the forewash,
gudgeon gravelling worms. Flies in the face of reason, freedom
treason. Ah St Gabriel’s calling,
roaring. A dace rises, batches flies. Flies in the face of freedom.
Long alone, I prise wombstone. Bequeath death.
Take off my girdle.
Yes, St. Thomas, recalled, goes
open tomb.
Water-striders crop vibrations of the fallen. Falling. Kingfisher plunges
perch water prey. Adjusts its catch point inwards, my innards
always taking whole. I swallow,
my haul home a safety I make for tunnel for bank for a runnel of fishbone.
You were once big.
Now only the tiny can help me.
A water boatman swims, top bellied,
carries bubble, silver,
its spiracles breathing through currency, ventricle.
You were there, once.
Maybe you remember poison must hewn sown
Oxford ragwort cyaniding horses, flint shrapnel, coffled crows.
Or hope
- rosebay willowherb’s purple remittal the azure damselfly dragon
Second Place I. Carrie; Restaurant; Early Morning She could not see my eyes for the duration of the song There is no candle burning brighter than my emergency torch. The infant new day is trapped in the old window II. Myself; Patterson Park; Evening Canal. A trout squirms through a paper Chain-link fence, and into my mouth. Reflection pools together in the water. No way in, or out, unless I decide to shred my skin. III. Entonio; Night Club; Late Evening Stagnant. Straight. The touch of discolored fingers, coarse like filters. The pumping is not blood. Away with your needs, I’m down to my last two eyes. IV. Mother; Snow Bank; Midnight We make our vows in the snow. Plant some flowers pull Some flower from the road In yellow-stained mourning, there is no son rising White. Twenty selfhelp-changers, Plugging my mouth. Blurring My iris out. V. Death; Bedroom; Mid Day The voice screams a trembling light onto the eggshell bed. All becomes yellow. By tomorrow, death be better bedfellow. Third Place We’re as far from it, as far out now, as centred on elsewhere as before. Straw slippers, a flute for the wind, incense, Zen art, the shrouded mountains clutter the room with gestures of emptiness. The real idea can be arranged to suit the season, like cut flowers; artificial grace argued by decor. Bound feet? That’s Chinese and passé. Today we embrace the bonsaied mind. Culture wired to form is always in order and art’s distortions are aloof from cruelty. Have some barracuda sushi in the balcony garden where wind tips the trays of gem-polished pebbles and pits them at walkers below. There’s no view of great-rooted blossoming from this height. Remote as emperors flicking specks from silken robes, we climb down the night into cars and taxis. We spit our cultivated tastes down the drain with the toothpaste, hide our dirty laundry in the clothes dryer and meditate on nothing.
October 2003 First Place 1. The burglars slit open Christmas gifts, impatient as children. Appliances were ripped from the walls so hastily cords trailed from sockets with their wiry guts frayed out, plastic skins burst. I inspect the squares of grime where things once stood, the bugs and dust are collected like shadows cut loose from their substance. 2. I hear my feet slapping solo on the cold linoleum. Coffee settles in the press. I can't drink it without you, the effort echoes old paths of movement; coffee to table to kitchen, hands from cutlery to your forehead, to your slick hairline, to your sticky eyelids. My body must learn new directions, break the old deference your absence renders unnecessary. I set a glass of milk down, and though alone, cross my ankles at the knee. I admit, you bent my bones into new angles, and I cannot stand to break the bad knits and take the itch of the body stitching them straight again. 3. As you walk away I watch you receding, watch the dark nestle deep in your ribs and the dips in your shoulders, watch it clamber over your back and swathe your flesh like a sweater. Now you are lost in the dark of distance. All little movements echo the big ones. Time is the shadow clawing up your ribcage, it is static that blooms between us. Second Place I An old man speaks Let them feel the pang of hunger. Lead them here those who now sleep in the softness of pillows and mistresses, those who day by day wear comfortable clothes, and shiny shoes, those with Rolexes, and cars and mansions. Let them take the path the children walked just this morning, bellies full of ceaseless hunger. Let them feel the grass blade cutting the skin from their legs as they run in rice paddies, forest, city streets. Let them scream under a hail of bullets. II In Manila, a child asks Grandpa, what are those? "Ah, fireworks, child. Just fireworks over at Mindanao." They are pretty. Look, is that a house burning? "Not a house, child, just straw made into a hut fit for burning. See, it burns bright and crackles!" Aren't those children, grandpa, there by the fringes? "Yes, child, and their parents too, watchers, admirers of the view." But they have tears, grandpa. "Child, it’s the smoke." They look sad, grandpa, are they sad? "Can one be sad at fireworks, my child? It’s best that you sleep now, the show will be over soon." The senator yawns, scratches his ass, and turns off the TV. III Malaria Quarantine, Refugee Camp Leaning toward the earth, a child settles down to rest under a vast sky of red dreams waiting for the flight of wings. Third Place [after] Gould, S.J., 1989. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the nature of history. W.W.Norton and Company: New York, p.1-347. ISBN 0-393-02705-8 Blood dries on my eye lids closing off the entry and exit. No one may find me. Perfection rattles underneath the shed and we call it a muskrat and say there is extinction soon. One can hear the slice of meat and the undulations of the tunnel where the tubes connect to Spring. What does extinction mean the children ask? No answers. Nothing. The storm was petulant and wound through silent cobalt tide grass caught by men and women fucking; they slosh air to sleep in their own abode. They kept breathing long after all the other phyla died. This is the gift of faith Ghosts survive in the corner of the coffin left out to dry to be used again next war. And as a litany we sing, almost without object, meaning or that denied lie instinctive by birth, "This mollusk is my brachiopod. This trilobite is a lamb. "This mollusk is my brachiopod. This trilobite is a lamb." Person #1: There is no order to life, you know. Person #2: Do you really think every chance has been taken? Honorable Mention Wake when the moon is low enough to show the fall, a golden shower overcoming the black rafters of space. Know the astronomical history: annual tail of bolides and earthgrazers, dark heart of the comet carapaced in flame. Know, also, what's been applied: one who escaped the warm confines of the womb only to be sealed in a box and thrown into the sea, who floated to an island and knew darkness as his first view of the world and who, when he died, was cast into the ether and anchored by stars. Drive to the country where the universe is clear. You wonít need a telescope to see the string of lights come from Perseus, or to watch hundreds of them drop into oblivion. There is something of a wish in the storm, to hold still as stone bodies, to arrest the fires that consume themselves so quickly we hardly see them except in their disappearing. To moor the light into place, to keep a picture of our dying that returns to us each year when the sky is just this dark.
November 2003 First Place Orange enters the green crawls to the edge of a leaf until it becomes fire, a word falling from the fingers of trees. There are always two searching in the night. It is easy to pretend what is offered is not hollow; a sound hiding in your hand. I want to say it is a wing, the touch of a feather after years of calling but it is more of an absence, color of leaves, green, to orange, to brown then dust. My father believed us holy, taught his daughters to be afraid not of men in cars or guns or rape but of silence. For days he would sit with a question, hold it over us as if it were a knife. Tonight we will not speak Second Place There is fortunate air tonight. Not a hint of choking gas; canaries sing that truth. Earth rumbles the vein, creaks the locust poles that stand between us and the world. We cough black dust and prophesy. Helmet lamps dim our sight and narrow our view. At dark day's end, the squeaking elevator lifts us to the night, to dump our pickax and shovel in a box, and walk to the company town to close our eyes to still more black. Third Place Too late, the northernmost tip of the Divide Country falls, a forest in a moist corridor, an oversized crack in the dry grasslands where fir and pine thrive. Cherry Creek trips on the hot ridge and tumbles on its way to Denver. There's not a canyon on this earth you don't occupy. You gave them all to me, deep constants. Fertile wombs were spooky. Pseudo-Buddha. Rapist priest. Guitarist who needed to go to Spain. I remember your fit, always up and to the... was it right? Go away from below the cliffs in the shadows in those boyish wrinkled pants stained with all of our secrets, like when the Colombian rain came through the window on us.
December 2003 First Place Don't believe the lies. Falling ain't flying. One small step into nothingness-- then big regret flails and grabs at the thin, thin sky. Grace, absented. You don't go mercifully blind; the earth, a benevolent curve from up this high flattens out fast as it rushes at you--desiring to collide with you more than you desire to collide with it. And the biggest lie of all: You don't die before you hit the ground. The last sound you hear is the crash, your body shattered, a slammed window, the panes rained out; all that remains, a framed emptiness. I found my meaning in this riverbed. I writhed life-like as maggots fattened on my death; I filled the silence with the thrum of busy insects. Each track petrified in the mud is a mouth I fed. Buzzards picked at my ribs, crows bickered over gristle, coyotes skulked off with the best bits: the heart, the lungs, the liver. Man walking your dog, cop, coroner, I know you mean well-- but sometimes the missing don't want to be found. And the dead want to be left alone, unmolested. Look at my scavenged bones. I'm beautiful. Leave me here. I'm part of the landscape now. Second Place I
am
form
FORM
form
for
m.
It doesn’t exactly build a resume,
but it’s what I do. Am. Same
thing &
that’s the beauty of it,
the tragedy.
Fluids?
My bread & butter.
They take my shape.
The good ones see-
p into my pores, de-
spite kiln and glaze.
Impermeability is potter’s myth.
No vessel worth its volume
doesn’t absorb content.
Oh the substances I’ve hosted!
But that’s another matter.
The issue at hand:
it’s been a millenium
and I’m tired; it’s time
to move on.
I said move.
Sometimes
I like to kid around.
E
vapor
ation
has been an e
ffective tool
over the years.
But a guy finally gets rid
of his insides, and finds e
mpty
doesn’t change a thing.
He’s still a vessel, se
e? And the problem with pour-
ing is it requires an agent. I mean
- ing is not part of my idiom. Still,
it’s great fun
to play decanter
now and then. Once
I found myself under a fau-
cet for days and fashioned
it some kind of identity
change involving runnething over.
It’s rather embarrassing in retro-
spect. Em-
bar
ass
ing!
So.
A good shatter
might be in order.
Breakage is beautiful.
Sometimes I dream I’m a frag-
(again the agent issue:
where’s a damn toddler
when you need her?)
-ment. Or
some thrown
& fired Buddha.
Maybe if I sit here
and concentrate not
concentrate, and let go --
no form,
content,
function,
agency --
I can become
an artifact.
Third Place On a morning when the sky spills old milk a man creeps up on his writing desk to make this poem and forget about the weather. He knows the line is a form of suffering, the dead-lipped empty page and a black pen like a zoo's cage opened after war. He fills the tip with ink, his dog fills his mouth with water and the poet's got to know how to sort it out: the big blue room, the sea, the empty bowl. He enters the poem, where it is Memorial Day and some grass is coming in. Honorable Mention I have read Auden and I have lived his words I have lain my human head sleepless on your faithless arm In honour of romance,or to affirm dimensions of myself, I have lost consciousness in the scent of roses If I appear to have preserved a certain goodness I have deferred my true self to duty. I grasp at one true thing "that nature admits to cruelty" but does not hide its beauty for this failing Crafting perfect flowers from paper, I decorate them with plastic, life-like butterflies With wings that will never flutter, nor will they wither Yes! Jupiter has moons that number seventeen and I will speak of anything but love.
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