Winning Poems for May 2007

Judged by Bryan Appleyard

First Place

Refugee sproutings across the Continental

by Mike Keo
MiPoesias

Brother,

let us find refuge in
unabashed love;

the crescent blade
tucked against your waist
held like an organ for self flight;

my sac of collected mango pits
I planted for redemption but never sprout
fruits in this land of many winters;

let us pawn them all in for;

tears and honey,
hummingbirds and misfortune,
naga and lock gates,

so we may one day burrow our hands so
deep into a furious hive of dashes and discomfort

that we are fortunate enough
to understand what hold

the spirit is not war and calls to home,

but a monsoon of poetry & weeps
that fastens the mouth

sweet like a Mekong vernacular
sticky with the weight of America’s

orange blossom.


A poem with genuine originality that seems at ease with itself - it is not straining for expression. The rhythm insinuates itself into your mind and the imagery is cleverly restrained. --Bryan Appleyard

Second Place

The Sandwich Hour

by Yolanda Calderon-Horn
New Cafe

Eyes draw a horizon on mine.

There’s a hint of sweet tobacco

breaking away from his aftershave,

scurrying down the nook of my nose.

“Mind if I join you?”

Do I mind?

I do and don’t.

But how do I explain with one

hour for bellies to restock?

“Let’s go.”

We head out of the office

onto a sunlit runner.

All the while we’re touching

on summer camp for the kids

and European cruises versus

cleaning gutters on vacation.

There’s an unoccupied table

under the pink crown of a redbud

tree. We sit. I cross my legs.

Topics are sustained with mid

drone voices: the dream of being

invisible; how he almost became

a vegan; why people marry,

(I uncross my legs) and divorce.

It is moments away until

the hour- One round hour,

like a corkscrew begins to top the wine.

I finish my soft drink- let ice chips

skate down my throat. We get up

to leave when he reaches over to me,

but pulls back as if I’m a stove

whose burners are turned to high.

“You have an eyelash on your cheek.”

Fig. There’s fig in his aftershave.


A very simple idea very well executed. This is a narrative poem, a story turned into verse with the lightest of touches, a delicacy that reflects the tentative anxieties of the encounter. --Bryan Appleyard

Third Place

In a City Made of Seaweed

by Dave Rowley
Desert Moon Review

Double Sonnenizio on Two Lines by Ilya Kaminsky*

In a city made of seaweed we danced on a rooftop, my hands
were slippery dancers, your body a love-flung shorebreak

arched at the hips. Now a city of sand slips beneath us too, castle
rooftops battered by the tide’s foamy tentacles: such trembly aggressors,

such lurchers of reclamation. We scrawl our story in lines
of seaweed cursive. One lover is a dollop of oyster, the other

a mother-of-pearl cradle, we cling tight as the dance-floor shifts.
Such stubbornness flings us through a city of kelp; it’s complicated

among the olive pods. Stubborn love is like a leatherjacket, that tough city
swaggerer, or a porcupine fish filled with air–you suck up what the ocean hands

you, whether krill, or squid’s black ink. The seabed is a rooftop, our story
made for flight: streaming from our gills in stubborn recklessness

these words of love are little bubbles, dancing, rising on a dare.
Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air.

*First and last lines are by Ilya Kaminsky.


Luscious and dense language used to entangle imagery and associations. The poem creates a dazed hallucinated atmosphere. --Bryan Appleyard

Honorable Mention

It

by Carla Conway
The Critical Poet

“Life begins unless you interrupt it,”
the old man said and what, inside a womb,
is any kind of isn’t? There’s no room
for nothingness, not anything on earth
is nothing: only tiny, timid, not
ready yet, but moving. Whether want
attends it, still it is: it makes no matter
until the metal sharpens, comes to scatter…
then, the remnants leave because there is no room
for lifelessness inside a mother’s womb.
It wasn’t: I was disposed to disagree
but then it was, though maybe it would be
a cunning seahorse? Next time that we met,
it had gained a head and stunted limbs and yet
it maybe wasn’t – somehow, I supposed
I’d love it if it were. They found its nose
and something pulsing: heart. I started looking
for missing parts, each little finger crooking;
each foot unfurling. What a dreadful eye –
like a raisin, baked – are we sure that it’s alive?
It tested waters just as I would do,
pushing boundaries – now it was a “you”
to whom I crooned as it paddled around the place:
here be monsters. Soon there was a face –
     Are we sure that it’s alive? When did desire,
     all by itself, create? When did despair,
     all by itself, destroy? I tell you never:
     life/death, plus or minus, the endeavor
     needs a being. We are sure it is alive
     but life is a pinpoint, not sure to survive.
and soon there was a need to hurry out
of the straitened quarters. Both of us grew stout.
This small world couldn’t hold him, mama’s girth
stretched tight, horizons cracking. This is birth:
what starts as frail as smoke attains a crown –
his head, his little body cloaked in down –
triumphant as a king. His little hand
finds my fingers finally.
                         I finally understand.


A dramatic meditation in being, this holds the reader with a serious of gentle surprises. --Bryan Appleyard

Honorable Mention

First Date

by Sally Arango Renata
SC Writers Workshop

As I turn towards the lake
I feel his glacial blue eyes
sizing me up from behind.

It’s not hubris, it’s a knowing,
an itch at the back of my brain.

He’s not my type.

So why the flounce,
the undulation?

My hips feel the freedom
to be rounder, my legs longer.
I stride aware of how the peach
on my toes contrast
with cerulean sandals.

My body is talking to me
and to him, in a swill
of invisible words
that will never be
mentioned

unless he is the one
to make the first move.


Like The Sandwich Hour, a narrative poem of great delicacy and precision. --Bryan Appleyard

Honorable Mention

Jaycee Beach

by Millard R. Howington
SC Writers Workshop

If I didn’t jog north to the Dania
Beach pier then I’d thread the sand
dunes south to Jaycee Beach. The
dune grass whipped at my legs as
I pushed myself in sprints through
the loose sand, then a veer over to
the wetter stuff near the gentle surf
and those clouds rising up like mighty
white towers guarding the ocean, and
tinged pink for the sunrise. I went
for the coffee from an ancient canteen
truck parked there under the swaying
palms, and the lovely blonde lady
who leaned well over to serve.


A moment captured with something of the insouciance of Frank O'Hara. --Bryan Appleyard