Winning Poems for March 2009
Judge Elena Karina Byrne

I, Raptor
by Brenda Levy Tate
Pen Shells

You feed me river rocks, oak bark logged with rain,
a braid of fence wire (grandfather-bone-thin), its barbs
worn to knots. For you, I swallow green bottle stems

the sea has thrown up, blond baleen hair, antler points.
My guts bracket your conglomerate: blood iron, hardwood
ash, pith. Keratin dull as barn windows. Fish-scale mica.

These are the last castings of desire, tossed at night like horns
off some buckdevil. A pockled egg rises from stomach to throat.
I wet it with your laugh, one final drink for you, then hack

a hawk-man pellet. Pwckk! Its heavy oval sinks like a cone
into pine needles. I fly light, easy. You make a rare bolus,
my compacted love. What stranger's hand will break you?


deliquesce
by Lynze
Salty Dreams

your face warm against the curve
of my neck. a palm, a panic, a circuit
breaker, closing, when we are
the beating of wings in cove. your nude

foot balanced on the rim of metal
outside a door that opens at a word.
the word is look, the door is yes. lips
fold into my heart, a strip mine. the no

that i could not say. powerless
in the wan sun, clouds with fire
inside, mouth on my thigh. your wrist
a river, banking in flight. the creek

in your arm, the water of my body.
the questing banks we follow with
a snorkel, a mask, a school of minnows
that tick frantically. explosion.

the slow melt of snow over crocus --
my eye, falling into yours.


Double Vision
by Susan B. McDonough
Blueline

"Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been
 poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find
 money cannot be eaten."
~ Cree Prophecy

The forest looks for its branches,
bark removed, smooth edges chase
ridges. Empty air. Stumps settled;
discs waiting on a checker board
asleep on a mossy forest floor.

The river a sleepy serpent: a trail
of exploitation and corruption.
Well wishers float on their backs
fore-cast in a logger's chagrin.
Skeletons lock arms heading beyond
waterfall's roar past a bend
where only mud will swim.

Iridescent fish are slipped inside
already thick pockets. Eyes that can't rest
remain suspended, weighty; a watch hung
from a chain. It tic tocs through the 70's, 80's 90's…
The water continues to rise and fall without
pomp and circumstance until it bleeds opaque;
so thick that we cannot find our feet.

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