Winning Poems for August 2006

First Place

Dirt

by Catherine Rogers
poets.org

After the test, I waited and thought
of its cold hug under the shoulders,
its weight on the chest, blackness
packing the mouth, the nose, the eyes.

When the call came, I went out
and knelt in the dirt, watching
the worms and pillbugs work
leaf-decay to loam. I lifted

a handful, smelled green
earth and thought how hard
seed-coats crack in rain,
how root-hairs uncurl, blind

and sure of finding. Dirt clung
to my hands as I rose and let go
a shower of clods that hit
my boots with soft thuds
and broke into pieces all
I have yet to become.



Second Place

The Western Ghats: 1959

by Bernard Henrie
Tin Roof Alley Poets, formerly SplashHall Poetry

Indolent dust drifts over the roofs and drains of my city.
Barber shops and a lip of rose water, soiled boxes
stacked with rendered fruit, faraway, the chug-chug
of a bus leaning forward like an animal hunting water.
Mumbai half shut down, alcoves falling into darkness.

One electric bulb coming on in a rooming house,
heat resting in hallways and squalid yellow rooms.
Your suitcase carried away beyond the dry hydrant.
A forgotten lipstick tube opened and never closed.
Our bed against the window, draped mosquito netting,
your discarded slippers gold as aquarium fish.

The language of your underpants cater-cornered
in a drawer, your forgotten bra hanging on a hook.
Your eyes looking over the androgynous city for rain,
monsoon held in abeyance beyond the Western Ghats.
Your red lips flung like coins into the face of a beggar.