sink holes and illusions

by Dorothy D. Mienko
Salty Dreams
Third Place, September 2008
Judged by Tony Barnstone


he opened me
to a different way of dying

beautiful as ghosts

I wore him on my skin
for days

in my breath
I stored his stories
and his poems

we were eclipses — an event
strange magnetic forces differences and fierce
chapters and colors

coral oceanic bubbles
clown paint


It seems that in this batch I am most attracted to elliptical, strange, lyrical poems that reference physics. Why is that? In any case, I am attracted to this poem. I'm not sure why ghosts are beautiful, or why the stories and poems are stored in the breath, or how we get from eclipses to magnetic forces to coral bubbles to clown paint, but I guess I enjoy the speed and surprise of the voyage, and I understand that all that I don't understand is erotic shorthand, short-circuiting of meaning, and so I don't try too hard to force it into the long circuit of the rational mind. --Tony Barnstone