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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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