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 Winning Poems from 2004 January • February • March
January 2004 First Place in deepest Britanny, she rides
the evening - ears afire - a gram
of dinner napkin
marking the corner of her smile
her hum gives the buggy's wheels
a colored tilt
pines rise
on blue thermals above the lake's
closed ears and Jeanette-no-pockets
puts the silver eyes of birdsong
in her lap, lays thirty mice on a dime
cropped August recrosses the water -
only fires and leftover bells slow
the winter at her feet she flies
to Tahiti the all-out blue day
buys Gauguins's kids with the little good silver
left in her purse
on la Rue Mouffetard, she sells
her little white hen, its clutch
of flushed eggs with the richness of wolves
and poise, she replenishes the days
January gargles Chanel no. 5
ballerinas toe the time
Second Place If I sit perfectly still, how will I tell the starboard from the port of tomorrow? In the dark, I believe in the red and purple fists of the four-o'clocks, the midwatch of my mother's coffee pot, the stories that bubble up the metal throat and sob their way through the curved glass of her lips, swollen with memory of the blaze. If I ask her how she stays up for the eclipse of my father, her answer is the sound of a mother wren, pushing its young from the nest, depending on the metal flecks in the bone to line up with true north, like iron shavings on a page gather around the poles of a magnet below the surface. Which way do I go? North or farther into my father? If I sit perfectly still on the lip of the crow's nest, will I hear his fist clenching before it strikes the bell and sounds the alarm for us all? I ask my mother again, when will the watch end? I listen for the sound of metal in the bone, I hear the water start to whisper, bargaining with the blue flame below the surface, somewhere off the starboard, or is it the four-o'clocks? Third Place West Texas winter is farmer faked when cotton is picked by machine. Trucks carry bales to the gin, scraps fly off brown skeletons in the wind. The drifts build up a mile coming and going from the co-op. A slow blink on a long drive, and you will see snow caught under the highway's skirt of weeds, and cradled in her ditch, that gully between the railroad's hump and electricity's tits. They're going to re-lay the railroad track by I-40 starting in Vernon. The ties are black and tar coated, ready for a Windsor knot. Every five feet there are three sticks, sort of bachelor nervous waiting for the girlfriend to come with a clip-on. That's how West Texas waits for snow. Come October and November if you can't wait, you can always drive past the caprock, draw your eyes into slits and see only the highway's skirt from the backseat. Push your nose into the cold window--one mile coming, another mile going, you'll swear Christmas, and look for Rudolph's nose glued to the end of an oil-pump, with Santa, riding in that field of perpetually nodding steel birds. When there is a drought, the snow is skinny. The farmer marks the collection of rows with used tires, pulls irrigation lines to the edge of his field, and everything waits for next year. The old telephone lines with their purple glass hats wait for collectors, their tendons drooped and snapped, they pout underneath their well-off cousin wires and spit at the cell phone dishes, that the farmer gets money for, that spot in his field for the tower. West Texas winter is better faked. The real stuff is black ice and blowing drifts-there are no trees except where man put them, and it's better to wake up from a backseat dream believing for a second, you had seen snow pure and pee free. The feedlot's aroma will break the spell, and you only think about your DQ hamburger that's not sitting so well. Honorable Mention Shells of ears form on us very early in the womb: but when, I wonder, do we start to hear? Five months into the trek toward birth? If so, by January 1951 I'd first have heard his baritone, and surely sucked it up like serum through my infant otic bones. Involuntary, artless, serendipitously sweet: my father's voice poured from his throat as if it couldn't not. Its plummy rhythmic float acquainted me in utero with all I'd later learn I'd really want to know. I started violin at nine, pursuing it so I could find the secret in my father's tone: by twelve, through years of strangling the fiddle-bone, I finally had the plum in hand. I'd something else in hand as well: the practice of this fingered swell and whap proved useful elsewhere -- in my lap. The thought at first perplexed: vibrato had to do with sex. I had the suavest tremolo on polished wood! -- I doubt my father knew why my cupped hand had suddenly become so good. These Oedipal vibrations marked our parting. I found new modes of music, more appropriate for me. Four decades passed, then Alzheimers began to separate my father from himself. When I returned and found he couldn't think or speak, I worried that his music might have similarly leaked away. I sang: he brightened like an infant, sang right back. I heard the muffled sweetness I'd first felt when I was little more than splitting cells. Its ripple was the flow of blood between us. We harmonized because we had no choice. He died, and now I find I almost have my father's voice. Shells of ears form on us very early in the womb: but when, I wonder, do we start to hear? Five months into the trek toward birth? If so, by January 1951 I'd first have heard his baritone, and surely sucked it up like serum through my infant otic bones. Involuntary, artless, serendipitously sweet: my father's voice poured from his throat as if it couldn't not. Its plummy rhythmic float acquainted me in utero with all I'd later learn I'd really want to know. I started violin at nine, pursuing it so I could find the secret in my father's tone: by twelve, through years of strangling the fiddle-bone, I finally had the plum in hand. I'd something else in hand as well: the practice of this fingered swell and whap proved useful elsewhere -- in my lap. The thought at first perplexed: vibrato had to do with sex. I had the suavest tremolo on polished wood! -- I doubt my father knew why my cupped hand had suddenly become so good. These Oedipal vibrations marked our parting. I found new modes of music, more appropriate for me. Four decades passed, then Alzheimers began to separate my father from himself. When I returned and found he couldn't think or speak, I worried that his music might have similarly leaked away. I sang: he brightened like an infant, sang right back. I heard the muffled sweetness I'd first felt when I was little more than splitting cells. Its ripple was the flow of blood between us. We harmonized because we had no choice. He died, and now I find I almost have my father's voice. Honorable Mention Somewhere near midnight, blacktop reflected like ribbon on a package. Deer froze, their silhouettes stared from glittering gold diamonds. Pontiac pointed at a green corn moon. I hoped to travel beyond mystery, past the horizon, into imagination. Breeze no longer entered the open window. When I threw out my cigarette, the cherry end scattered an orange comet into exhausted mist. At the roadside, I stopped, stepped from my car, breathed in the night and realized, there are shades of black. Honorable Mention Between the storm window and the window pane there is an empty space in which nothing occurs anew. This vacuity in the Realtor's view- "One wall paneled in frost, a floor of fragmenting leaves, and remnants...windswept in. An ample safe harbor along the boundaries of paradise and demise." It is a shop window fogged over a vacancy. A crow's mirror a housefly has rented as a fence. Eight thousand views of emptiness. Eight thousand views of a single crow and a single smokestack. Eight thousand ways to discover nothing to eat. He will stiffen to an aesthetic. Honorable Mention My thumb traces the sumi rat, its haunch an ink comma round as an apricot half, inhabiting strokes on a book cover. Haunches, inky commas, and I don't sleep, while oracles come to life from a book's cover, jump along my knuckle and a rafting hand. I don't sleep, seeking oracles -- index finger arrows to a random page -- await magic to jump the knuckles, raft my hand; justifications plagiarized into omens. My index arrows a page and I don't weep when the rodent leaps - my justifications vault into omens and up my sleeve tucks, gnaws my cuff, bears a litter. I don't weep when the rodent leaps, because a man waits, too, like a mouse up my sleeve, bearing his litter of expectations: in another twelve years. A man waits, too sure, says When she's eighteen, I'll buy my trailer - no expectations until I get there - head west; leave my blinker on all the way. When she's eighteen, drive my trailer west, where you'll be waiting; laugh to see my blinkers on and wipers clicking counterpoint. I'll not be waiting. Our summer illusion chafed, rubbing counterpoint to his children's needs: Wednesday ice cream, football Friday, Barbie shoes. This summer's illusion chafed as a too-small ring upon my finger. He missed ice cream on Wednesday, football on Friday and cried when he spoke of his youngest daughter. There's a silver ring on my finger I sometimes swing on a pendulum, try not to cry when I think of his daughter, or consult any handy oracle. My mood sometimes swings on a pendulum, arcs round like halves of an apricot. Downswing, I consult any handy oracle, upswing, my thumb traces the rat.
February 2004 First Place A winter wren flits from bush to bush and tweets. Everything moves in its tune as if this part of the world is a montage scored in chatters and flits. My hands hook the luggage handles. Mother hides her leaks, prevents a scene. I have my keys and the wad of money dad gave me. Mother makes sure I packed my shoes. Dad pats me on the back and says, “Nice knowing you.” He laughs, but it’s true. The me they served peaches to is not the me they’ll see in a month or two. I'll be ripping columns from the evening news in a neon city. I’ll have a green canteen and sarongs of grape leaves. I’ll be shoveled under sandaled feet, planted like poppy seeds. Leaving the driveway, I wave like I’m on deck with a hanky in my hand, fussing in the salty sky, the ship’s hoots stressing the white-sailed scene. This is how it should be. A distance swelling by a driver with a license and that new car scent. I can't see around the backseat packed with boxes, so I don’t know if they’ve gone inside yet, but my hands are on the wheel, and I can still hear the winter wren, the tune of the latest me, that song I’ll sing at sea. Second Place 1. I want to fold into the man sitting beside me on the train. We should wrap ourselves into one, I'd like to turn and say, the way my grandmother folded her soul into dough smacked against the butcher's block, the way she folded me into her arms and crushed the breath from my joy. I should surround you with me, I'd like him to turn and say, the way these tracks stretch their many arms into sleeping towns, the way clouds pile on clouds out our window, the way your eyelids drape autumn eyes as the sunset enveloping the sky becomes too beautiful to bear. 2. love is never an essential and words I stack in the dusty cracks of my knuckles cannot throw shadows against gripping hope there is no blowing back wishes or snatching them from the thieving wind they will only flee faster like a bobbing balloon that hasn't been caught in twisting twigs 3. redhearted women hold babies to breasts and bluehearted men hold breasts to chest kiss sweeping eyes fold desires into winter coats and stick sweating gloves into pockets to save for later when the chilling winds pick up 4. I do not believe the reflections in the window - the faces locked in blur, the harrowing colors of echoed sun. not me, either - not my sad eyes, arched brow, and lips forced to pout into a beautiful stare. not the only one looking in and looking back, not me, either. Third Place There is a little pond in my backyard. A fish of some kind lives there alone. During the summer months the pond fills the air with stink, the surface is clouded with greens and grays, with things living and dead. I do not feed the fish. He seems to live off nothing at all. I think of this while my coffee cooks slowly on the stove. The heat went out last night and I could barely stand it, shuddering all night with nothing for comfort save my blankets and a second pillow. I rub a little grime from the window, turn on the water in the sink. Steam rises from my hands. Honorable Mention There is always something falling from the sky around this island home- some small, hard acorns raining from the green clouds of a liveoak to lie beneath the leaves of St. Augustine grass, a hail of hickory nuts scattering across freshly turned soil to dry under the sun and split their skins, a palmetto branch breaking free after a violent storm, its paper blades slashing the air a final time. Not to be struck by such endings (and beginnings) on a stroll through the yard is to lose one's connection with the world whose dome has cracked. Little by little the coward in us begins to squeak his distress with would-be gods whose terrors fall even where the great blue heron overshadows the stealth bomber and snowy egrets eclipse the fighter jets resting at the Air Force base. Across the marsh, the paper factory spews another million reams on which to print the news: One more Blackhawk has plummeted- atop hot sand another score of men lie wasted, their skins baking in the sun, their spirits seeking shade beneath some grass. Honorable Mention Sixty-thousand hungry shouting voices split this canyon - see where shrieks of laughter tumble haphazardly, like scattering pebbles fallen drop-offs deep. Hawk and helicopter pass at angles in steel sky, both alarmed by human bodies waggling stumpy branches, lofting butane stars that wink at the winds skirling dim twilight. The music rounds and swells in balloons of sound, reverses neatly in the Gorge's mouth; consummate bubblegum blower that sucks back its own art. Honorable Mention Sky drizzles cars With headlights on The street is a painting Of a black and white movie My lover calls on my cell To tell me she’s holding Herself hostage Tapping the butter knife on the counter As proof This morning I take my car into the body shop A vicious mutt strains at a chain The sign on the window says Deliver all packages to the tattoo shop next-door A man with a wrench the size of the moon Smears grease on the one spot of his face Still white We’ll take care of you he smiles Meanwhile the streets threaten to mute Back into cliché I frown myself happy Afraid to look up Where a naked nun rides a fish across the horizon
March 2004 First Place Venetian blinds allow in bars of light and an orchestra of sparrows chutter in the locust tree. I have lived here long enough to know the universe is carpeted, draped, that mountain ranges loom in National Geographic, glossy pictographs I cipher with my fingertips. I am not deprived. I have seen rivers on TV reflecting light like mica on the screen, heard the music fly fishermen make, their supple lines snapping through the air. Not even the jaws of life could wrench me from this room where I grow old with you, where a flamingo is a black and white bird in a dictionary. Second Place My mother would stand at the table, a pillar in cheap cotton and vanilla extract. She showed me how to mix ingredients just so. I coveted her copper mixing bowl. I used to dream of the small hands I might guide someday. Patiently teach them the craft of baking. Crack an egg or two, how to mix ingredients just so. I’m accomplished now, best cook in the family, they say, but my sister's daughter decorates our Christmas cookies while I wash and put away the empty copper bowl. Third Place Her disease was busy making lesions in the brain. She sat on the couch, eating Ben and Jerry’s, dodging guilt about how her day had been. It was Valentine’s Day. She was starting a love affair. She was tired of writing poems about deer in the woods, or snow falling. She was thinking about endings. The thought of need and dependence depressed her. She bristled when the well-intentioned changed the subject or stopped picking fights. The jeans had come from London. Fringed and funky, they were studded with a Swarovski crystal. Her husband said she looked hot in them, her navel peeking over the waist. She imagined the salesgirl’s expression as she plunged the needle into her belly. It was the first week she had injected the medicine. She was afraid of dying too soon to wear the jeans out or of ending up in a chair. When she had bought the jeans, she wore them right out of the store. She walked all the way home. Meanwhile, she wondered if the woods and the deer without someone to narrate them, would wither or startle, steal someone else's imagination. She would dutifully write about the current attack on her brain, her body. She would pick up her tablet filled with paper, from those woods, empty until then, so that she might record the vagrancy. A doe is standing in a grove of birches, licks the barb in her side, becomes startled by the taste. It is snowing. It is still snowing. Honorable Mention No bells or whistles sound to signal a warning. The emergency ascent leaves the cavity behind my eyes folding in upon itself. What could be the Captain's intent? Why risk years of anonymity to reveal a silent, predatory presence submerged just below the surface calm? Shouting for attention has yielded nothing but echoes in the exploration of this vessel. I am abandoned. With mere seconds before my revelation, I reach the bridge and find the controls locked, steerage jammed. There'll be no more skimming along the bottom in concealment. After porpoising between the two elements, the ship powers down, settles in the waves. I make my way topside to stretch, breathe untainted air, unwind. With no need of further stealth, I openly stride the deck laughing at the wide-eyed stares greeting me from shore line spectators, convinced of their personal security by the distance between us. I'll wait for cover of darkness, break out the Zodiac from stores, slip it over the sides, steal ashore and begin the villager's education. Honorable Mention Winter Wednesdays in a museum studio I sit stand and strike poses in full attire for "drawing from a live model" an art class composed of women instructed by a woman artist At first the view lacked perspective but our humors were as clay balanced & shaped in time the space soon becoming focused as a closer rapport took form they all agreed I was a suitable subject By the second week I discovered the cafe upstairs I met the lady manager & we too made a working acquaintance She allowed me ice water at break times and once on a Saturday when I was short on change her cashier Lulu lent me the fifty cents I needed for a neopolitan pastry Back in the studio Rollina presented a colorful comparison to illustrate a 3D drawing technique: Imagine while drawing Michael's image being carved in the round of an apple pulp We all found the viable analogy in good humor I responded by adding the figure was pleasing to my poetic energies perhaps it would appear in one of my writings and as they were drafting I was drifting back to a younger time sitting at the kitchen table of a kind grey-hair'd mediterranean woman Her gently wrinkled hand caressing my brown curly head making me stronger by blessing me with sistine memories to keep us secured as we travel in different realms but never really apart when even smaller I would rest on the living room carpet at her feet She dozes in her crescent chair while I watch television The variation on the third turned into communal reward as I sat in calm repose watching too as students attentively observed the master-artist spend the first twenty minutes rendering in charcoal on blue-grey quality paper the face of a man-child the pensive aspect of a poet At the close of our midterm meeting she offered signed and dated the fine portrait after I expressed how it would make a great gift for my father's birthday tomorrow The next week I brought in a concrete-poem a picture painted with words signed & dated about a cathedral-castle constructed in honor of a legendary lady I recited it for her & her students wearing the chap cap she placed on my head sitting in a reading position while they were drawing the planes of the face the lengths of arms & legs the contours of torso & shoulders Slightly surreal describes the fifth a warm winter day and beneath a blue hooded lightweight jacket I wore my black Matisse t-shirt with the red sphere in the chest of a dark silhouette floating through a yellow starry midnight-blue sky then midway through one blond lady in love with learning (and so with living) told us she had a vision of Michael in her dream the week before I waited a polite pause before inquiring She responded she just remembered when she woke my image from the night before and in the morning after her husband explained how artists often see in their sleep their models She had missed that week I told them the way pre-Raphaelites 19thC painter-poets held close ties with their models From the chair on the platform I continued on about Rodin & his model ruby muse & mistress Camille Claudel leading me to mention the Jungian idea about how the silver-touch of a good woman molds bronze & empowers a man like when love gave the old man Rodin new wings At their request I read my latest lyric about inspiration from new experiences found while engaged in a concurrent workshop where I was a visting poet And on the sixth Wednesday while they are putting on the finishing touches I will recite this one for them along with "La Pieta" dedicated to my father's mother (she asked them for their love and nothing more) an art poem giving color to marble justified to the left since recently studied and revised again mostly by women postlude After announcing the finale selection as the poetic-documentation (a reading between the lines) of our on-going collaboration we decided I would deliver the overview as a serial during our 3 pauses They would step back to inspect their progress and listened with interest to a wordsmith's voice recollecting in phases the creation from our lines The recitation including the cameo piece was well-received with respect to us all we all agreed we were an inspiration to each other As a memoir I made a visit to and took a farewell look at each easel to compliment their compositions to remember their styles a young mother and graphic artist presented me her drawing with my profile bowed to the left We noticed a resemblance to Sting I asked if they had seen him on television performing live at the music awards the night before and did they know he used to be an English professor before he became a successful songwriter Honorable Mention "In a certain sense all of us are running." --Kierkegaard I watch her every morning at breakfast. Her back against the bark, she sits in the Oak’s shade, her mouth open as if she’s singing or speaking to a mockingbird who hobbles in a spray of leaves. Her cheeks are smudged pink like a rash or sunburn. The morning never changes: this table, this coffee, this spoon circling stirs. The painting. Today I get up to take a closer look. Her hand covers a yawn the size of a pill, a small pebble. She props to her knees and looks at me. I pinch her off the canvas, perch her on the lip of my coffee cup. Her legs flop over the edge like the strings of two tea bags. She’s barefoot and beautiful but her features are smeared and leaky. We don’t say anything like we're long-time friends that lack the arrival of news, but I can tell she’s bored or expects something from me. She crosses her arms. They bleed into the pink of her sweater. She looks away in a pout, her bottom lip poking out in a bristle’s stroke. I look up to the wall where she usually is. The canvas drips like an awning after rain. The Oak tree yolks in a blob of tempura to the floor. “Why is it running?” I ask her, but she’s gone. Footprints path from the table to a puddle of paint. I lifted her from the wall. Now the painting is gone. Is this what happens when you stare at art for too long? Outside it’s raining, and I can’t remember if I’m the woman an artist once loved or the woman trailing footprints down the sidewalk, whose face is bleeding black.
April 2004 First Place He bores us in a hundred different ways, This endless cornucopia of quotes, This master of unparalleled clichés. With every glib MLA Journal phrase, (Recalled from furtive fannings through his notes) He bores us in a hundred different ways. You catch him off his guard, and he betrays A local accent – is it Terre Haute’s? – This master of unparalleled clichés. And though the erudition he displays Seems genuine, when he over-emotes He bores us in a hundred different ways. For classrooms simply aren’t the same as plays, Despite the histrionics he promotes, This master of unparalleled clichés. He rants and raves, insensate to the daze That fills the room, the yawn-constricted throats. He bores us in a hundred different ways, This master of unparalleled clichés. Second Place Let's have it for Natalie , Natalie Jean walking the neighborhood, looking for licorice in pleated pink pants, a little fatter the day after she was alone with a whole bird stuffed with crumpled bread. Forget her brother. He walked away from want with enough to cross the river before nuts and bolts shut off the flow of a morning broken on the stone beneath his feet with the bones of Natalie's bird. He blows white from an egg, then swallows the yoke. Wouldn't you know, this is over before anyone understands. The river isn't in Natalie's neighborhood and the bird should have flown its coop. While the bolt enters the nut, her brother walks into town, twisted candy in his hand. Third Place How her best friend, Kip, who was her lover just that one time on the bus trip their senior year in college, blanket in the back seat, under four corners moon, somewhere in New Mexico between the Bisti Badlands and Angel Peak, told her— "When you're drunk, the shutter is wide open, the F-number is bigger than the weight of two brains combined, but there’s no film in the camera and who’s to say what love is when captured?" How she’d seen pictures of one-armed grooms with torn satin lapels curled up inside Jerry Falwell Old Time Gospel Bibles, ripped apart by in-laws from white taffeta gowns, grand children floating in the air, holding balls of white-out between their legs, bodiless arms lifting them up on ponies, giraffes, leaping goats, horse-head barber chairs, sea monsters with double tails—an offering of saddles and blankets of wood on a carousel of matched pairs. How she still drank wild photons that left no tracks, still rode the soft blanket of unopened love. Honorable Mention Upstairs, a paneless window faced the lawn toward the gravel road. Elm shadows taunted the room in the half-light. Corners strewn with newspapers, clothes stiffening in the dust, never worn. In the woods behind the barn, where Jack was put in the moon for burning brush piles on Sunday, a rain crow cooed a warning of showers on this sticky summer day. The field beyond, where the Progfeld boys chased me home. Dingy tents, patched with denim and magenta tape, the berry pickers, gypsies, roaming the farmland. What magic spun within the walls, cast upon us by night? The wasp stinger I found on the sill, still alive, stung my finger. Beside it, the mysterious skin, wrinkled and wet. Father said it was a beetle's shelter shed just after its mating. My reoccurring dream of the Eddy Bridge, white locomotive steam so volatile to face, yet intermittently cleared. What was under the bridge? I remember; strange, Mom does not. I laid on a quilt of patched wool and velvet near the window, beside me a girl of five; night train rattled the pane, shook the wall, passed into the planet's shadow. Honorable Mention Canned peas and a slab of tofu designed to resemble beef nestle together on a plastic plate so green the peas vie for attention. A homely fruit jar filled with ouzo stands within an inch of this simplicity. At my fingertips lie three books: one is opened to a Tiepolo fresco; another is opened to the American constitution (Amendments, Article I, about dressing and redressing grievances); and yet another is opened to smiling irises. This last book is leather, with imperial stamps that flatten edges along gilt-rimmed pages. I push that book away, afraid. I've watched irises wilt. Tofu, peas, more ouzo, please. Tell me that Tiepolo was rich when he was born, tell me that he inherited Raphael and Veronese. Tell me, books, how he created this woman, bare-breasted, astride an alligator, her eyes focused on the architect of Würzburg, a dandy who lies straddled over a barrel (filled with echoes, no doubt). All the musicians lean to the left, and all their instruments lean to the right. Tiepolo created a slippery surface, where he realigned feathers, ostriches, camels, and disdainful, dark-skinned women with his own allegory for heaven. Two peas escaped, but no damage done. The amendment is splattered with a tad of tofu and A-1 sauce, but the lines are still too legible. That book will stay open 'til it dries, but Tiepolo is shelved with other books about memory, creativity, intelligence, and goals, including something about DaVinci, and something else about horizons, where these lines should land, high or low, or right in the middle. Just like Goldilocks, heh? Or was it the bears? The bears. Chicago. Liquor store down the road. The leather irises stay, shut, their smiles bloom forever purple between slim gold rims. Honorable Mention Two or three times a month or more I tell her about being rounded up for extermination, or running out of pills in the middle of the night. Sometimes she waits patiently while I caress my lies or opt, instead, to spend my time describing the baby I found frozen on the lawn. Sometimes, following her upstairs, I think about how I left Dr. Zimmerman high and dry, owing him thousands and thousands of dollars and I remember Trudy back in Brattleboro, watching me leave and asking if I'd gotten the cure. Yesterday I let my watch read 11:50 all day long. Late in the morning, something like snow came spitting down, overwhelming my wipers. Crossing Main near midnight, I saw Margot through the windshield. I wanted to get out and tell her that I've lived before, tell her that the exterminators are coming around to gather us up again, that I need to see her now for an hour or so, that I need to have some coffee right away, that I need to take my pills again before I go home and scrape the baby off the wet grass.
May 2004 First Place I almost sleeping when he come. He say, "Cat, why you not look up? Eyes see all that be, until breath stop. Watch with eyes." When I open, he shine like morning, right here in scary place. Two-leg mother with me, talk touch, talk touch. I not try stretch out claws, even after she hurt my ear and trap me tight for bring where are other sick ones. "She love you," Sun Cat say, "so she want help you better but not time now for her do that." He stand close and then I sitting beside him with no sore ear, and ribs not breaking under. Puss on table lie quiet, black-white like me. He big fluffy boy with paws curled and hay in tail. "What barn cat be this?" I not want new enemy and he mighty long fur but no move, him. Red earstick and face shut off. "He be you, name Sam." Now I not smartest scratcher in litter box but I know me and not-me, and him not me. He stiff as shavings frozen in stall when I dig for cover pee. He a dead old buddy. I with friend who glowing all around. It dark everywhere but Gold Mister jump – just like that – off table in air. "Hurry," he call me. "You not my only today." And we outside, where is car and Two-leg mother. She cry water salt on box in arms and other two-leg carry cage but it empty. We watch her go away and I very sad for I remember she have love me. "You tell goodbye," Gold Mister speak and surprise me. "Where your barn is?" Before I answer, we there. Stray tom stand in loft where I like fight him. "No," Gold Mister tell me though I not talk this. "His now. He need home; you have fine other place. Not worry about him more." Tom my enemy once but I no problem for him now. Farm dogs run, maybe smell me. They stop in path and grin so I tell what happen. Hope they figure out. "You gone away?" young stupid one ask. Grey-muzzle lick at shadow and understand. "We meet soon," I tell her. How I know? Others not outdoors but we are in house and not through window, either. "They allow see you this one day," Sun Cat explain, so I say we miss each other. I make sorry for not always be friendly. I mean son-of-a-tabby sometimes. Car in driveway and Gold Mister show me strange thing. Two-leg mother dig deep deep deep, toss earth stones roots and put plastic bag at bottom. It have paw press against, white like Sam foot. Wet in there so she shovelthrow sawdust too. "That from pile beside window where I napping in winter." Gold Mister not speak. "Why I leave her? Just young fellow; needed here, me." He spin bigger than fireball that fall from summer. "Job done," he roar. "You get her ready for bigger sorrow." I understand what he mean. She have ancient woman- mother who very sick. She lose me, learn get strong. But hard not tell her I watching. She never even hear meow or feel tail brush, before snow cover not-me. "You visit back one time," is all what I allowed. Then he tell me stare at sun, no see home anymore. They aster flowers where we hunt today. Old cat mama near, even Siamese friend find me. Gold Mister teach me how go back, be some new kitten when I finish learning. But this good place and I happy Sam now. Second Place "O rose thou art sick," Blake said, predicting the dead in a blossom, depicting decay in inordinate life. All life is inordinate: Tragedy lurks in the bud, and winter curls up in the spring. But when darkness comes after Sometimes you hear laughter rise up from dead ends of the thing that you loved. There's a secret enclosed in a hand that's ungloved by despair. A whisper can tickle you like a soft breeze a tiny reminder, the gentlest nudge that's less tragic than tease. All passion's irrational, caring too much is the way of the heart. But the oddest disparity! Seems that hilarity hides in the center of loss: whatever destroys also seems to enjoy making sure that you toss yourself full into chance. That's when you dance. Third Place The old man, he mumbled, grumbled, tumbled from rationality. He got that old malaria again? visitor asked conversationally. Old nurse hovered, shivered, quivered in agitation. He'll die soon says she-- he picked up the bug in the rich men's war dug up out of meanness and greed. Old men had need of more everything to feed their thirst, the worst pursed the call to young men to fall into step in craters blasted by hate and the quest, the wresting of power, raising the flag of death on unmapped battleground. She tramped around the bed, chatting, patting the hand of the man asking questions with no answer, her old scuffed shoes from days bygone when she and the old man had won dance contests, before carnage became an everyday thing in that place of emerald dreams. Mama, brace yourself! I'm coming home! he cried in fever-slurred words heard only by old nurse who nuzzled his cheek, knees weak. Not today, sweet thing. I'm with you and you can't go. Honorable Mention I think I have the correct day on my calendar, a smell of lavender and tar. Hmmmm, darling. Black irises and purple daffodils, a city rising from a swamp, refrigerators, tires. We clink glasses in the empty restaurant, a ring of crystal like a big brass bell as Merlot swirls in our goblets. A menu written in code, obsequious waiter speaks a strange lingo but it doesn't matter to either of us, a swish of wings from your angel mates outside checking on you. You angels are so insecure. Do I look to you like a serial lover of angels? Your feathers tickle, I have to admit, the love- making could be more comfortable. We hardly notice how the steel furniture sticks into our tender parts, I feel as if I am floating over the city, riding a lightning rod, hoo hah, I'm coming home, a white dove, heavens above. Honorable Mention On the darker wings of sunset Are shadows in which the eyes lose sight; There's a bridge I have not crossed, yet It threads its black line, an egret Tracing across a Marsh's dim light On the darker wings of sunset. Below, in the bay, trawlers let The weather move them, but I recite: "There's a bridge I have not crossed yet" In the visor shadow, the net Of city bulbs perforating night. On the darker wings of sunset There are two camps now: one is wet With need to tell, one leaves no insight. There's a bridge I have not crossed, yet I'm here to move or to forget The way erasure swallows, a rite On the darker wings of sunset. There's a bridge I have not crossed. Yet.
June 2004 First Place I had a pointed fish and the word "Look!" forked in my direction as we argued ourselves blue with held-breathe screamings over dinner last night. Today I sit amid the cosmos and daisies and marigolds crayoning my last stand in big, bold letters. It reads: "Neighborhood Closed" and I'll wage it war-like at your head, this, my brown-paper flag of resignation. The doors are slammed and windows shuttered. Polite entreaties (if proffered) can slide their way down the walls and pile themselves in heaps of tangled alphabets upon the stoop. There. I've taped it over the threshold. Excuse me. I have flowers to arrange. Second Place I should have left her alone. She looked different than before--must’ve been her hair or the way she knocked down purity’s etiquette. She changed the tint on her lips, told me love is at once automatic and incongruent. I should have left it all alone--her picturesque ideas of how mountains should melt over the sky, the thought that Hermaphroditos would come through the window in search of a quiet place to rest after sex. She never understood that pain between two people could burn words into marrow but she was ingenious enough to remember the road to my left hand and coy enough to lay another orchid beside the ragged bend where there was always snow, the only reminder seasons were ever alive. She was cold enough to watch me struggle to grasp the time of day and laugh when the night coughed to an empty start. I should have been content before--when the last thing she saw were my fingers brushing against the bedroom wall, when the last thing she remembered was the dense breath of winter spreading petals over a dry river bed. Third Place Evergreens are taken by rough men who bury the river in thumping rafts; leather boots tread the spinning bark, the logs run the men. Tri-masts define the tall ship, they anchor taut sails as she surges through swells and spray, the sea sails the ship. We circumnavigate each day, the body seismographs the hours, ink of sweat stains the air, we cause passage of the day. * * * * Her breath is cool on the molten glass that turns on iron rod; a globe of agate brass woven from memory behind cool eyes. The bottle is wide mouthed, full bellied; glow acquiesces to green tinged clear; a golden rainbow in sunset that surrenders to broken dusk. Her hull is pushed through the bottle mouth, the common string pulls the masts upright above her bronze body, twisted strands of hair, the varnished woman of the prow.
July 2004 First Place When I could not get with child I swallowed the egg of the meadowlark who eats the daylight, the mother of untangled grasses. A long drop, the egg bore its root in my foot, it stitched me together with grain. I am patient now; I am not damaged by waiting. Languid as a coming rain, stalks inch alongside my veins to the tips of my fingers. A grassland has thirst, so does a fire, a cup, noon, the color of dough, so while I sleep the moon creeps between my poised teeth to feed and flood me with moonwater. When I speak, the scent of lengthening wheat overwhelms me. Shoots rise straight up and don't droop as tears, don't fail like questions; they get on with growing. I hold a handkerchief over my mouth to veil the clover and bees that tickle my throat, but the angel who's due at my tent won't catch me laughing. A kiss would do it. One sprinkle of milkwhite salt and I'll break like bread at your table. Second Place The hearth is always dark-- I initially left the second h off, a Freudian slip, an (un)intended typo. All this kindling, and yet between us we can't seem to build a fire to warm this chilled house. No home, this. I read his poem out loud because I know you hate poetry. You interrupt, devil's advocating: A bridge isn't a stringed instrument--but picture the Brooklyn bridge, I almost say, how it looks like a viola tipped on its side-- and winter's not long enough to describe the heart's Ice Age--oh, but honey, what of the thaw?. I wouldn't anthropmorphize night--why not?--stars aren't lidless eyes- -but they are! can't you feel them watching?-- the moon's just light, not a wound in the sky that keeps pulling out its stitches--no, that's me, that thread is mine. And the owl's constant hoot is not a lamentative question-- you're wrong--I've listened to it mourn my lonely hours. We don't have to give night false life; we know how hopeless the dark is-- and yet it's the bright light of day that's always stripped me faithless. I give up, put the book back on the shelf, and look out at the crocuses poking through the snow. I think of a woolly mammoth's bones, buried deep in the hard ground where no one can see them and doubt anything could withstand such coldness. Later, I come back and tag on the real ending: and doubt love, like that massive animal, ever existed. Third Place This pink hallway spirals inward. Floors slope up and walls bloat out. There are no corners no. No corners. Eat a single ridge of kernels then curve the cob then curve the cob then. In this sack so many things are red. These wings are cracked, said a voice, These splices are fraying. What choice long chosen sliced along the seam? Type a single line of letters then return the carriage then return the carriage then. This caterpillar, green as the leaf it eats, retreats, chewing one end to the other end chewing. When I poke this bug it curls around a center of legs. It thinks it is a pebble and no trouble can beslubber it no trouble. Lay a single line of tiles toward the eastern window then recoil to the western wall then recoil to the western wall then. In this sack so many things are wet. Here are the eyes you lost, said a voice, They're broken. What choice? They're broken. Honorable Mention "Men are all bastards and women are bitches," She said as she emptied her second large glass. "Women are bastards, and men can be bitches!" He said, and he knows it, as sometimes he switches To priapic bulges from pandoric niches, Though both, they agree, are a pain in the ass. "Men treat me badly. They take me for granted," She groaned, and the Liebfraumilch label just grinned. "Women don't want me until I have panted, And poetry drips from my lips!" While he ranted, She took a new bottle and swiftly decanted It into their glasses like rain in the wind. "Men have it easy. They don't have to hassle With birth control compact or IUD coil. They all want a woman to maintain a castle Where he can be king so that she can be vassal!" "Oh, bullshit," he said, "That's a little too facile. Your one-sided view simply makes my blood boil!" "Oh, does it?" she stormed, "Well, you're never the victim Of hard-hats who gawk when you walk down the street!" "Neither are you" he guffawed, and she kicked him. (In accordance with her self-defense teacher's dictum.) "Well when they do gawk, you do not contradict 'em!" He accused, and then both of them rose to their feet, Quite unsteadily. Both looked exceedingly haggard. "You're a pig!" she declared, "just a chauvinist boor. You're a sexist, a swine, you're the worst sort of blackguard!" "I'm not. I am liberated," he proudly swaggered, And then, arm-in-arm, with the bottle, they staggered Into the bedroom and closed the door. Honorable Mention * I can’t tell anymore if you are walking toward or away still subway and street curvature draws you with my hazy lazy eye, a sketch of shoulders and jawbone browned with hazel freckles come summer everything weighs more until the humid limp you looked so good on paper I keep walking past the place you stopped intent on blindness being merely the sweat in my eyes * I’m bent over looking through my knees the cat reversed, his checkered linoleum reflection righted beyond him the room is below my stalactite possessions the escher-stair boxes of books ready to sell, ready to spill the paintings propped against the ceilingfloor all the smiles frown, all the heavens hell I have no part in this except for the rushing of blood the gravity of my cheeks and hair the cat twining about my legs above my head and so below * the great redrimmed eyeballs of my failing gerbers frighten me terribly, madness would be so welcome now hanging up my hatter thoughts midsentence and simply plucking each sore petal, deconstructing the death of a flower how the body dies, drooping and beautiful summer is coming like a sadist with a torch to scorch, blister, peel what is my skin? the color of a peach, the rind so I move in tight circles searching for the pit *
August 2004 First Place And it is this battle of the giants that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about Heaven Freud i Afterwards, unsettled, I travel for days. The moon's bone, thin and curved, points to a new paradise. I sweep the forest floor, cast fishing nets into the pines above our bed of needles. I fill the forest with favourite things: marmots and chattering bats. Of course, I will add turtles and rabbits. We read to each other by the glow of wolves' eyes, a string of starfish, varnished fireflies. The earth hardens beneath our backs. I lay this bed among lady slippers and ferns. I make him discard everything but his Argyles, loop his pocket watch over the twig above. Bedtime, we thrust and sing. The watch swings back and forth, dropping minutes. In the sleep of trees owls devise a plan to furnish him with wings. Each morning he sifts piles of dead birds. He doesn't fear death, but nor do jackdaws, I'm told. Some birds flirt with suicide, fling themselves at oak or ash: titmouse, nightjar, bullfinch, crow. My lover promises when his work is done he will return to me. I will knit Argyles and wait. Birds have given up breath for him. Among their feathers faith now thickens, and I rinse away their sticky blood. ii It's easy to see that his purpose is love. He unstrings the beads of time in the sun. It's easy to see that his purpose is death. He sings to an implacable fire. His mother was a lapwing, his father part kite, part nightingale. He carries her cries back to him, as if they were coins to unspend time, to unpawn summer. iii Dear Icarus, I envy you the bite of heaven as I lie cradled in the earth. I saw deer today. I glimpsed a falling star and wanted to show it to you. I will be faithful. I am a firefly captured in your hands, and the forest floor is carpeted with the dead. The stars hang from cracks in the ceiling. How can I be so cold in the summer? Dear Skylark, I saw a snake today, a brown striped viper. I found a broken shell, and blue was the blue of the sky. And periwinkles were my lover's eyes, and you are free. And I have had to let you go. And I have let you go. Dear Oedipus, There was a spider in the lighthouse, a dry web on my face. And you have gone to steal your father's eyes, to put the moon in a wagon, the planets on the backseat of your old Fuego. She waited for you in Rapallo, she is waiting in Dunbarton. We are all waiting to see you drown. Memory spirals up the gallows hill. Dear Peregrine, don't fall. iv At night the earth shrivelled and you whispered stories in my ear. They were not fairy tales. If I had been truly hungry for you, if jealousy had been a chain I'd fastened around your neck, then I'd have coveted every hour you spent without me. You recounted the story of a bird who started as a boy. He set off to bring back his masterpiece. You asked me to accept this. You wanted me to lie under a juniper tree and wait for your return. I am sorry you had no Ariel to carry you home in her arms. I flinch to remember the magic your father fed you. I was your lover, your mother, your sister, your whore: the wine you were looking for was locked in my pantry. I gave you as consolation two strangers telling stories among gossiping trees, together forging an epitaph, their happy ending. v on the griddle of the sun our dreams melting like butter and when you leave me to sleep my eyelids will flutter. Second Place Blekinge, Sweden, 2004 We found ourselves a beach. A dirt road swirls right down to the sands but we park and walk the last half-mile. It’s not a sunny day, but here we are, the best we could make of it. My son and I name flowers we haven’t seen before— starsweep, yellowbrush— and pick the berries we have. I show him how raspberries have thorns. He asks me again. “What are thorns?” * Hospital things are green. Yours is a thermometer, a staple in the mouth every dawn, stony-faced until the satisfaction of a beep. We make love and I imagine it has taken root inside of you, recording your flutters of pulse and ecstasy, like all our sex is really for somebody else. * Clouds conceal the passing of time, the long light and sun’s invisible trace creating their own eternity in spe. One evening the underbrush exhaled mist, the sea erased itself against the whitening sky, the seams between things unspun into a blank horizon, and only the reeds and fine strips of muddied sand between us and that void. We live off air and water, after all; is it so strange to see ourselves caught in their fluid escape? Even while we stand on the bank, blood-heat courting mosquitoes. Were I to dress myself in that silver, where would it end? * After lunch (sand gets in our bread) the sea turns red. Algae come in from the Baltic; not jellyfish at least. A large bird flaps overhead, so I point. “Look, a stork!,” because we’ve told him about storks, how they used to drop babies Santa Claus-style down the chimney, but I think it’s most likely a heron. Third Place Nobody dies in this poem, at least not yet. The capital of begonia is pollen. The capital of whatever is why not. The capital of hunger is nuggets. Jennifer, who works for me, comes to work flush-faced. Itís 96 degrees and she has high blood pressure. After an hour, her skin is a cloud. I tell her to go home, relax, take her medicine. The capital of tuxedo is holy. The capital of locust is vibration. The capital of wax paper is sweet. I wonder if, by sending Jennifer home, I might have earned a few extra tokens towards heaven. Later, I smack my kid on the back of the head, not too hard, for doing something or not doing something. I forget what. But I figure Iím back to where I started, heaven-wise. The capital of myopia is yellow. The capital of H-bomb is dandruff. The capital of magpie is silverweed. I stopped taking my medicine years ago, for reasons that made sense then. Now my wife tells me Iím tempting fate. I am. I carry a feather in my pocket. I swallow pins. My stomach rattles when I walk. The feather says nothing. The capital of Maine is Augusta. The capital of my name is J. The capital of this is this. I have this sickness where I create people and give them lives. I care about them more than people I really know. Mrs. K drove her bug into a streetlight. I write her a sympathy card. Mr. N has cancer of the fingernail. Pinky. I canít sleep at night. Nobody dies. I repeat this until the air around each word blossoms.
September 2004 First Place The first time I fell back, hit my head on the pew. No more than a plum-sized bump but Mother dragged me down to the empty bathroom, woke me up with icy water. From then on, overcome, the world often spun. At the childrens Christmas pageant I watched my younger sister lead the winged procession to a little Mary, veiled and expectant. My father struck a match and lit his cigarette. Outside the car, snow fell white and fast. Night closed waist-deep and held us. He called me histrionic. Second Place All is just warming up; the whole thing won't be like this: already someone has flipped our snowglobe on its head, and the little white flakes swim angrily beneath the statue's face. It is right, I suppose, that we airbrush a Colgate smile on the dilemna, no matter how yellow it becomes: for it's clear, unstated but clear, that things will fulfill somehow--the future wears a garland. But though we know this even beyond knowing's equipoise, we insist on reiterating it each time there is some kind of silence in the heavens, when only the wind ravages the medlars. After all, it's not so bad: a little painful, but definitely worth the little sweat that falls. Last year's rutabagas are yesterday's tomatoes, which in turn will be next year's rubies. We can study every stage of the project, and give each back a solid pat. Remember when Dawn with ineluctable song carried us like a mom totes her young? Or when the sky's wrath was so pervasive it could not even be looked away from? These, as all meanderings over petals, mean nothing, do nothing but warm us on cold nights, when the fire within goes dark. Third Place What is it about birds that make them able to crest cold currents of turbulence, catch sudden updrafts, en masse, without a wing tip touching? It’s like a needle pulling thread through the sky in a crazy quilt fashion but with a basic pattern in mind. What is it about us? He held the needle when we flew. I tagged behind with the ragged end of thread--thought he knew our design, but his erratic pattern of loops and downward spirals tied me in knots he cannot pull through. So we fly without touching, as if by the dictates of an algorithm written to factor in the confines of a low ceiling and walls that close in.
October 2004 First Place (for Ai) Beside me in bed her arm crosses the arch of her nose, and I think, Radishes, she is the color of radishes. Once we hovered above our bed a kiss like a paper cut brought us back. Now, I slip from sleep and tie her to helium balloons. Her weight is unimaginable. I lean out the window and watch the red dots falter, ache, and disappear. Second Place A River Transformed VI: after Wang Wei's Jinzhu Ridge (4) Standing before a Teacher Brush to ink, ink to paper, paper given to fire, green flames released. The teacher spoke, "As empty as a barkless tree, hollow as bones that strike a bamboo drum." Masked and hooded birds, specks to the eye disturb the branches of trembling aspens. The wind divides a waterfall; water dissolves rock and grass beyond tomorrow. Why have we taken this narrow road with its unpredictable turns, quick drops and impossible climbs? When we stop, do you expect to rest? Children at play in wet red clay laugh at how their pies taste without almonds. * The literal translation on a Chinese web site: Wingceltis goldenrain shine empty bend Fresh and green ripple ripples ripples Secret enter Shang hill road Woodcutter not able know www.chinese-poems.com/ww4.html 1. The beginning is most often translated as bamboo. 2. Wingceltis is tree used to make fine paper when mixed with rice straw. They are often hollow and when old are venerated. 3. Goldenrain is a large yellow flower often called Chinese lantern. 4. The first line in Chinese (without tonal marks) is "Tan luan ying kong qu." Tan-luan is the name of a Chinese poet and Buddhist teacher. The line shows the reach of Wang's talent. Third Place It was a pretty good excursion. We went to that pond, i mean lake, Tiberias -- Jupiter, every puddle in Palestine gets called "lake." They should see the Atlantic. I thought I heard the murmurs of a crowd just the other side of a hill. Excuse me, a "mount." When i got to the top I saw a mob squatting on the ground. It seemed boundless. Everyone was rejoicing. A guy offered me smoked fish on flatbread. It was okay, but nothing beats our fish sauce. A group under a tree invited me to sit in its shade. I don't usually fraternize, but the sun was hot and they had wine. Anyway, it turned they were here for a speech, which made me suspect sedition. I patted the dagger under my tunic for reassurance, but when this guy with flowers in his hair started speaking, I relaxed. He talked about peace and didn't once complain about our army. The lecture was a success, I'd have to say. But that sweet wine gave me a Hades of a hangover.
November 2004 First Place 1.
Under the green one-lane suspension bridge,
a snapper naps on a large rock
close to the bank, cold brown
ripples surround its shell,
large as a round tabletop for two.
It stretches its neck west toward the sun
while tucking in its limbs.
2.
"Isn't that an awful thing?"
Mother pours a half pot of coffee
down the drain and fills the pitcher
to make another. "Who found him?"
Grandmother wants to know.
"Jeremy Lashomb saw him swaying from the bank,
thought it was a dummy at first, a practical joke."
She adds how he was fishing for bullheads.
Grandmother crumples her paper towel napkin.
"How did he climb those rails without falling
in such a state of mind?" She wonders aloud.
"Hung himself." Mother says spilling
a tablespoon of coffee grounds. Grandmother sighs,
"Isn't that an awful thing."
3.
Past the pink motel on the corner
where Bob Jr. met his secretary
on Thursday afternoons, past
the nameless graveyard
with headstones sinking into the earth
and moss and grass grown over the dates--
1705-17something. Past
the overpass with a rusty cylinder core, past
Bob Rickard's, who made me "Rootin Tootins"
for weeding his garden--a concoction of 7-Up
and strawberry Kool-Aid, past
the green one-lane suspension bridge
where a seventeen year old boy
hung himself when I was ten,
(the first dead body I'd ever seen)
and I watched as they lowered him.
Time dilated in those few minutes?stuck, so
that the green one lane suspension bridge
always has a body oscillating like a stopwatch
and a crowd mesmerized on the shore.
For a moment, we all look away
when the snapper wakes up and hears our voices,
hushed, excited. It tucks in its limbs,
stretches its neck, dives.
Second Place The bones of my body if broken a certain way can generate light on their own. That is why i can say the thing that i was, the thing that now waits, has turned into a funeral lamp. I think hard for all of me. Light jumps in to fill the spaces where my body's been. Third Place You've seen it before but never in morning: the pink tinged ridge, a canyon in dawning, a river of pulse beneath it, alive even as she dies in her dreaming, alive and seemingly speaking. Listen. This is the story not categorized, alphabetized, the title you'll never see alongside Broken Mickey Mouse Ring, Age 5, or Bicycle Accident, Second Grade, this is the uncharted waters of her and you try to imagine it, the way it tells you in that still-girl voice, I didn't think I had a choice, and you can see it: that rage red stain; in truth, you could always see it reflected in her eyes, her silence and you know how later is, that now you'll start to see it in every black winged fledgling girl in every curb shadow and you'll be thinking my god, who touched her, who made her hide in a corner, pick up a razor, how thick was the boulder they rolled before her, that they never heard her words? My God, you think, this beautiful day almost never happened at all and all you really want is to stop thinking about it, to start the morning over, somewhere else on that landscape of her, all you really want is the person you think she is, without all the yesterdays and you know how yesterday is, that haunting voice never shuts up unless your hand is over it, so you grasp her wrist, awaken her with a kiss, but you cannot forget the river that turns, burns beneath your fingers, silent but alive. Oh, still so alive. Honorable Mention There are keener sorrows than these. --Jane Kenyon Years from now, they'll excavate the bowl while planting vegetables--potatoes and corn, staples for a young marriage--and your sorrow will still be whole, a blue hollow you buried deep in the earth. Your grief, then as now, will seem silly and small, and as intangible as the source of a cat's purr. Perhaps she'll hold up the fanged skull as he digs rows, and examine the holes as sunlight pours through the sockets. Perhaps they'll marvel at the delicate skeleton, the arch of the back, the diminishing tail still in tact. Perhaps as they wash their hands under the hose, they'll feel the weight of their own bones, invisible luggage, already packed. Perhaps, that is when they'll begin to consciously lug it. Perhaps that night after sex, the young wife will hold her husband's skull and think about the soft spot on an infant's head. Years from now, deep in the ground, you'll dream you're still writing poems while your cat sleeps on your lap as heavy as a newborn. The cat will awaken, leap to the floor, run out the door and never look back, not when the rain begins to fall, not even when a sparrow warbles. Honorable Mention how to conquer the dilated pupils' mutineering mountainous exchanges
overcoming one lover's uncelibated baiting Judas' kiss
remiss of forgiving years forensicked by remorse
and reminiscing nightmares
trysted to sentimentality
torturous territories hearts' enclaves
secrets acknowledged within a well angered rehearsing spate
olive garden lime grove apple orchard treasure trove
any sort of grotto magic springs
the kissing gate's go first
a left off the list
the birthing Yangtze's swirling almost frozenness
the Ganges' capillary spread as seen from the moon
the reputation's credibility the crooner's schmaltz
corset farthingale my dearest yours sincerely
there are many ways to complete
illusion like the vanishing point
in Vermeer's Music Lesson
Mona Lisa's peripheral smile shenanigans
Cimabue's Madonna's blush dawn's hush equatorial shadows
the ideal body weight the AIDS survival rate
the Palestinian Gaza
pocked smashed ruins
equating physicality with fear
green light stop light red light district
trenches body bags oft quoted statistics
the clawed coagulated anhydrous bloodied disappeareds
one earring the house key a child's shoe
a sometimes-so-sorry- senior-moment
soggy cabbage
the erection
's promise
the save-face
the hot flash the
last dance missed
chance the maiden's hymen
Busby Berkeleys prancing minions
the cavernous comfort of the black and white TV
the free press the unpoliced election the coroner's post-resurrective
justice
piss in the pants clean sheets the fountain of youth
truth honor the ozone layer fair play equal pay
the way we used to miss other
tomorrow just another day
the apology's intentional endeavour
heaven's hell and hell's decompositional favor
Hutus Tutsis genocide's unpronounceables
389 tons of conventional explosives
between the touch of a saviour's promise
and reason's narrow gate hanging
chads dimpled
ballots
something accountably disgraced
December 2004 First Place The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and the other begins? --Edgar Allen Poe Not here on Fayette Street where the dull faces of commuters stare back at us in their pilgrimage to nowhere. Not on the sidewalk where a dingy robin lies like a broken doll, its missing eye peering into the next world. Not in the greasy smoke that braids the air above Hardees with animal scents, drifts into the blue haze of power plants. Not in the used hypodermic needles that gleam through a sewer grate, or crushed cans of Colt 45 rusting by the curb. Not in the red scrawl of graffiti on brick row houses where home-boys lean against the wall, peddle baggies of rock or weed to walk-ups and drive-bys. Not in the purple and black billboard advertising play by play for the Ravens games. Perversity, Poe wrote, is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart. In the end, he lay face-down in the gutter, delirious with fever, poisoned by madness and tainted alcohol, bribed to vote under the names of dead men for shot after shot. Now, his features carved in garish granite come alive in stone. Sunlight reflects off stained glass windows. Roots strain to topple markers in their slow crawl through soil. The path weve walked from his Amity Street garret traces Poes own footsteps as he strolled with his pubescent cousin-wife and her mother on their way to worship. We read from Tales of Mystery and Imagination into the sunsets orange glow, wait for his spirit to rise through clay to accept our offerings this bottle of cognac, and a black rose. Second Place when three I smiled at moons painted on a clown's cheek steamed between steel beams threw shoes onto a bridge years later a nail shoved rubber up my foot, no splash no scream just mom horrified, tweezers pushed numb pulled warm I didn't belong away or home ñ neighbors were racist, scared of bombs played pool, watched tv porn I had my saxophone, kung fu felt happy cancer lasted through christmas, god wasn't dead, I wasn't ready to need, to need twenty loving years I still don't trust entertainers still not my lover's body rising Third Place My mother called it the lens of hate the day of the swastika tacked across the two-car garage door of the Beckers vacationing away at Myrtle Beach. She held me like a last breath, squeezing my chest so tight my heart couldnít have been any bigger than a freckle. As the banner billowed like a spreading rash she recited the story of the tall boy with his basketball who disappeared into the end of a day outside a different window long agoóa time she fancied herself well wearing gingham and modest skirts. Sheíd put her hands over her eyes, as she did mine now, wondering aloud which stars marked his birth, how in the twilight his tennis shoes glowed like twin moons, what war he would draft into, how the first color of every night seemed a shade of bullet, and about the steady orange metronome beating up and down, up and down, no shot in sight. Honorable Mention Juanita was driving, she told me she was the seventh daughter of a seventh son as if that was supposed to scare me. The ocean was so close we could feel the salt in the breeze as it whipped through the wing window. I didn't ever want to stop and my thoughts fell back to the Hotel Allesandra-- she had a way that made yesterday seem like it hadn't even happened yet. I swear she could read my mind the way she touched my arm then whispered if man is five then the devil is six. Our money was running low and I never blinked an eye while she told tales of what was around the next curve-- she tucked her hand under her hair, waited for me to get nervous. All I wanted was to borrow a piece of freedom from the past until I could feel wet sand crunch under my boots. Not once did she mention the sadness that got caught between the tread and spit out into the desert. I know now she could tell the future-- she just wanted to break all the rules. Honorable Mention The first clues to your identity are in the preserved photographs. Garden pictorial, seed and leaf. I can almost smell your hair, almost feel the orange squash and buds where you lie down. Muddied root, moist garland fixed in your wet dark hair. Resting bench, climbing trellis. Questions from the rasping press, Gasps from the surging crowd. No interviews today. Available light, fixing tray and washing bath. Photographed like this: A bird, the breath half-expelled. A single swan, the lower body rusted into the lake. No eye contact. No personal questions. Padding horse, lacquered carriage, yellow street lamps and lighted store fronts, outdoor tables More interior shots: Barefoot with a private gleaming arch. Half-smile into the champagne glass. High strung. Painted lips, satin peignoir, folds covering the sheer leg and curved back, one mule on, one shoe one mule on, one shoe misplaced. Vintage 1956. Later: Camera tripods collapsed, lights and fans in crates. The crew and lackeys ushered out. Rooms empty and doors close. The hunting cat smiles in sleep. No interviews this time. Upper Manhattan yawns and dims. Cabs run without yellow lights. Silhouette on a 7th floor, Owlish light and ticking clock, one bare leg tucked under, cool to the touch in the smudged dawn. Black slip, reading a serious book. Shining Polaris, hooded lid, blue dust at the resting eye, aquiline nose, cheeks rested from quarry marble. Sheen from your face lifting in shimmering mirage. Wild blossoms by delivery, a final black and white photo the face and stem leaning south into the new December. No questions at this time please.
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