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 Winning Poems from 2000 May • June • July • August
May 2000 First Place I apologize for the Korean women forced to fuck fifty Japanese soldiers every night for the Irish potato famine the Tuskegee syphilis study the Puerto Ricans sterilized by the Public Health Service for the torture in every country from Argentina to Zaire for the Holocaust the gulag the great cultural revolution I apologize for the thirty years' war the hundred years' war the Punic and Peloponnesian wars the world wars the wars unnumbered and unnamed for the sacking of cities the population transfers the ethnic cleansings the gassings the smallpox blankets the atomic bombs the mass rapes in Bangladesh Berlin Bosnia I apologize for slavery for the naked miners worked to death at Athens for Spartacus crucified for the middle passage to plantations of sugar cotton coffee the masters siring and selling flesh the whip the chains the rack the ropes the gasoline none of this was in My plan somewhere I went wrong was it the carnivores? was it reproduction? you worry about dragonflies sea turtles Siberian tigers just think about the extinction of all the dinosaurs I'm sorry the comet killed them I even regret gravitation try to understand I was alone I needed to create at least you die I have to live with this forever Second Place Although the leaves are turning, and departing the trees, he barely notes their absence, a lack of core, a mere glance. Once, when trees were ten feet thick, he walked and felt their pulse, the sap that oozed, was his sap, the froth of spray, was his spray. Sometimes she loved him and the sky would stretch out like the vee of geese between her thighs. A dark purple, and he understood, grass and dew and ragged cliffs. Now, he itches his beard and wine reminds him of old Chinese Poets. Third Place The man with the snake around his neck has few friends. At church he sits in a pew empty except for himself. His prayers are unheard, but the snake's voice is sibilant, whispering to the snake god, and we hear his body slide over the pew's grain. The man with the snake on his shoulders is invisible. But the scales shine in sunlight, overlapping in forest green and gold, glinting in shimmering waves while he floats above the sidewalk, sailing the currents down the street. The man with the snake for a headband has no face. But the serpent's eyes can hypnotize, freeze passersby with its lidless gaze, bring attention to the beauty of its jawline and the delicacy of a tongue that tastes pleasure and fear. Everyone has questions for the snake. What does he eat, where is he from, what is his name, race, phone number? If only he would speak their language, he would give meaning to the life of the man who bears his weight. Honorable Mention Born ugly as a sack, and concrete- planted in this loamy scow that chugs beneath me, that chugs its clockwork march past cock crow, rows ploughed, seeds flown, gloaming's dock. If only I could be Salome -one night- and surge and spin, roots trailing veils, next day the digging would be fair, toes weaving in my lover's hair. Honorable Mention for William Gibson 1 0-1, baby, jack us in and toggle on-- I wanna be full-time, real-time and global. 2 We've clicked and tapped 'til dawn and our exhaustion meet, EtherNets become ether-mates. Tonight? 3 Until tonight, when Category 5 and Fiber cables melt and servers crash, too hot. 4 After our electrons kiss what bliss is there in lips, mere flesh, compared to mingled data? 5 Hard drive overload! Down- load now! A file to fill every byte and lock you up for good. 6 Hack me. Break my code. Know my algorithms. Use my data nodes. Leave your lethal virus. 7 No bytes tonight. Except triple X come-ons and suspicious attachments from strangers. 8 Ano- nymity's best, the flickers disclosing nothing, flesh's failure staying secret. 9 Replace me bit by byte with circuits and switches. Make me one with the glimmering Machines. 10 Replace me part by port-- I'll flow through solid states, transcend materiality and Be. 11 I have become the hum of hubs, wink of servers, data flow at the speed of light. I am 12 at last, a String immune to time and common colds, messenger on the way to eyes unknown. Honorable Mention purple grape kool-aid lips these children in laughing and the light of the sun different for them that playground, red rock gravel-like pressed into my shoes, jeans, clothes and we laughed all day and ran up that hill village seven where I left my dreams and fears child-like in fancy, bottle rockets of blue springing out over the horizon my reality, burst fire of pikes peak across the window too close to touch bump city bike rides and grass in my mouth sweet, rolling in crabtrees dust I remember the feel of the clay in my hands when we dug the backyard out and the caterpillars I collected, keeping them in, cardboard castle beneath my bed, and the light was so different then than it is now and my hopes and fears, I never could concieve my existence then I just remember the lamp light, late night swooning shadow-like across the street I didn't stop dreaming of that for 8 years at best dad moved my family 15 times maybe 23 homes they abandoned I always envisioned them missing us, my sister and brother and little pee-wee's soul, maybe floating around the fireplace where he was kept here, at solid computer terminal musing time I wish to get back to the reality of earth for in the concrete city my soul divides, in half-like, where-ing it lies next, what becomes the answer to the questions of half-existence I half exist in my mind the remainder outside and I can speak and you can hear me and see my words and my little movie I wonder when and how it ends backgrounds of sounds my childhood lost in village seven, box-kited nightmares and forgiveness of the ripping of my heart strings plucked along on the smurf guitar wishing and muddied faces laughing it echoes as it does still in the greenways the light of the sun different for them
June 2000 First Place On Saturdays, we pick over what's unwanted and consider adoption. Objects have lives and stories to tell. I am willing to listen to the wooden jewelry box, the Victorian doorstop. Do things get homesick once they change hands? We objectify our lives and tell our stories. I've said that my rocking chair came from a socialite's estate. Have you ever been sick over something that has left your hands? There was an etching I loved of guitars that no longer orchestrates this room. Pewter frames were for the taking and I removed a stranger's wedding pictures. Objects have lives and stories to tell. I once ruthlessly pawed through a dead woman's drawer of gloves. Do things get homesick once they change hands? Second Place Everything's perfect. The crown of the hill, the bee that perturbed you, the wallow the dog slumps sideways into, daintily drinks from. I sat in sunlight. Now I'm sleepy. Whatever I've eaten is sleepy inside me. Colored lights strung like a spine. History erected as a barrier between children, hills, cattle. Ursa major, ursa minor. The last streetlamp's yellow pool and the hare disappearing then disappearing again and again. You don't have to be hard at work in order to work. It is easy as pi, that numerary, or the zero let out of the millennium. That simple to point to when the going gets sordid and there's a chip putting its period in the black. You can say to yourself, Mine. Return it to the holder cleaned and ready for use. Work accumulates beside the kitchen sink, the road, the streambed. Leaf and cracked antler. It is windy, or, as he puts down the feather, winding up. Third Place Do nouns and verbs vacation? Words I thought dependably mine are missing. Have they flown to lie on white beaches and be lulled asleep by jade waves and cold Coronas? I hadn't thought they'd worked so hard for me that sun and surf should be prescribed against the rigorous demands of simile, pentameter and trope. Does trochee strain the hearts and backs of syllables? Does rhyme inflame the glutes and abs of pronouns, personal or im-? Is stress stanzaic, rest caesura's antidote? Is syntax taxed this cruel April? If you see, relaxed among the palms and beach umbrellas, parts of speech impersonating idle rich, please tell them I concede: we'll try a prose that's unassuming, workmanlike and plain that tells a story, unambiguous and sane, of ordinary intrigue, lust and power. All we'll strain will be the gag reflex of high-toned literati and the twisted plot line's plausibility. Honorable Mention Pa's breaking plow slices hard skin open. Everyone smiles, putting large hopes in little seeds. The sky is high and wide. Voices are lost in the distance. Buffalo bones and arrowheads ride the plow's wake. We kneel in dust praying for rain while hot winds shrivel our wheat. Standing on the rise above the potato patch, Pa watches the red horizon all night long. Our soddy's another wave on a buffalo grass sea. Angry rattlers twist away from empty feed bins. Mice whisper endlessly of brick houses, rock candy, lace. Pa teases Ma that corn husks are poor shoes for an Irish mule, but she just leans into the traces and pulls hard. A prairie grave cradles the new baby's head. When we rode down to town in spring, Ma wrapped her arms around a scrawny cottonwood and cried. Pa looked away.
July 2000 First Place This is the day the bee-bearded man's only son is to wed a girl from a town that knows nothing of bees. The son himself feels no affection towards the bees, but out of a sense of decency and heritage has taken his father's trick one step further, wearing a suit of bees and a tophat that sets the wedding crowd to murmur. One fat aunt from Paducah faints, and the men who know her gather round and bicker about what should be done, until the question becomes moot as she opens her eyes and mouths the word "yellow." The only clothing he wears not made of bees are his Italian leather shoes because he's afraid of what he might step on. The day is hot and locusts hanging in trees make it difficult to hear what the preacher is saying, something about hard work, love and honey. No one listens. They are looking at the bee suit, the way it moves constantly, yet stays whole. The bride thinks about the coming night, perfume between the breasts. She wonders if bees get tangled in his hair. The son counts the moments until he can shed his winged tuxedo. The bees think nothing, drone, worker, all dying for the hive. The father sips whiskey through a straw and considers his toast - drinks held high to the first sting. Second Place The past returns, puts things beyond my reach An injury from long ago holds sway These limits form a wall I seek to breach Unwilling to accept fate, I beseech The failed parts of me to work my way The past returns, puts things beyond my reach I catalog frustrations, knowing each New movement is a victory today These limits form a wall I seek to breach Each setback saps my will, attempts to leech The strength to keep returning to the fray The past returns, puts things beyond my reach The best of medications slur my speech And leave my mind a formless lump of clay These limits form a wall I seek to breach Mere exercise the tool I use to teach The nerves and muscles that will not obey The past returns, puts things beyond my reach These limits form a wall I seek to breach Third Place Jesus wore moccasins and braided his hair. I met him at Wounded Knee where he sat in the dirt crying blood. Coyote hides behind billboards on highways built over graves of warriors who have never died. The children of Geronimo race across the moon on the backs of wild horses while eagle feathers hang from a cowboy's hat. Buffalo nickels fall from heavy skies as the Crown Dancer shuffles neon feet on mountains that form words with smoke. I meet you in a bar where Indians drink for free. You recite poetry to beer bottles while crows sit on the arms of Custer's statue. You think yourself invisible and become what you believe. I watch you fade against the jukebox while it plays your favorite song. Honorable Mention and lost the middle line of a poem I was busily composing while I gazed with lyrical intent at your eyebrows, two busy worms joined in coition and there were iambs and enjambments and a wayward trochee but the moustache you were growing tickled my fancy and I sneezed and blew my chance at love true love. Honorable Mention My teeth, rooted in my gums like oak trees, permanent, immovable, have begun to drift in my mouth, a slow imperceptible shift, so subtle my dumb tongue cannot sense the ineffable, glacial movement. In five years, the impenetrable wall of my incisors has divided, each tooth separated from the other. Like the wife of Bath, I am an amorous woman: my gap-toothed grin is proof enough for Chaucer. My experience lisps through the naked spaces between each vulnerable tooth. What then is the measurement in millimeters or grief for the gaps between teeth drifted, wandered from the root, or the distance between your silent back and my uncertain hand, a cool expanse of mattress gapped between us. Honorable Mention Because I do not know you I dream about your scar I would like to hold you and lick that angry mark ask it why it mars your face an imperfection I want to devour it salty and intoxicating not knowing you, I am in love with your scar it smacks of sex or wine or violence strawberries or heat or babies. The scar lies in my bed nights reflects up at me from sidewalk puddles sits beside me at dinner disrupting the meal and horrifying my companions When I dress it if you let me I will give it huge galumphing boots and swishy trousers so I can always hear it coming Give me an iron in its shape and I will brand it on my thigh a secret of my own to touch and ponder Honorable Mention I am a sapling in your hands, bent and peeled, Curved and carved beneath your finger-knife, Which splits my naked pith down to its core. I am stripped and plundered, harvested, The clenched hard buds of breasts and sex, The open throat and petals of my flowers, The soft red flesh and juicy swollen heat Of that sweet fruit which ripened at your touch. This, my branching body, is sundered to the heart As you strike your axe into the notch By which I'm felled.
August 2000 First Place When I stand naked before showering, I scrutinize the freckle on my left middle finger, the curve of my toe, the way skin stretches over my pelvic bone, the slope of my breasts. But she, after a month of mornings dressing in cramped spaces, knew herself best by extending fingers or stretching arms behind her back, or cupping hands over a chest that was taking a new shape, escaped to a cracked window and stripped. Imagine her, held captive, when light landed like thrown paint on her bare skin. Second Place The creek crept out of its bed this morning, swallowed a wooden bridge for breakfast, spread itself like butter over green fields, drowning daisies, uprooting cattails. Waters gossiped with the neighbours, come to get a better look. Ripples giggled at the sight they made standing on the hill, bathrobe chatting with Sunday best, like they'd never seen water dance. Third Place "When you walk the streets of Pisa, and the tower pops into view for the
first time, it is shocking -- the visual equivalent of a prolonged screech
of brakes. For a split second you wait for the crash."
-- Robert Kunzig, "Antigravity in Pisa"
Discover Magazine, August 2000
Sometimes I want
to stare into your eyes
beneath silk-spotted night
and hesitate to say something,
act as if the words won't come,
and when your curiosity and desire
finally squeeze me too tight,
open my mouth and solemnly whisper
something like
"coleslaw boxer shorts"
or
"oxygen pimpstack"
just to taste the odd angle of a moment
when no rules apply,
for which no poems have been written,
just to hear brakes screeching in shocked silence,
just to see the stutter in your eyes
as something you never thought you'd hear
threatens to topple you like Pisa's tower,
just so well be immersed
for a few seconds
in a scene
all our own,
which no two lovers
will ever share.
Honorable Mention She broke a tribal tradition yesterday. She spoke her dead mother's name on national Television no less. It was a plea for an apology from white Australians. Ordinary people. Ordinary people, with little idea of why. Why should they apologise? It didn't happen, not in their time. They didn't settle here way back when the land was roamed by the Aboriginals. The land was roamed by the Aboriginals. Seduced and robbed by the white man, they lost their own, one true heritage Condemned to live in segregation then force fed missionary zeal. Far worse was yet to come! Far worse was yet to come, The came in big black shiny cars. They came and took the children away. A generation, stolen from black families. Their intentions were good, educate the kids turn them into pseudo whites, train them well. Turn them into pseudo whites, train them well. Forget the grieving mother the angry fathers who had lost their loving happy children. Ripped from their parents with no say, they lost their families and identity. They lost their Aboriginality. They lost their Aboriginality, until education, a new generation began to wonder about their tribal past. Where is my family mother? Who are we? The stories were told, anger ignited hot blood. Where is my land, what is my name, my tribal name? Where is my land, what is my name, my tribal name? A call from the children of a stolen generation. The courts are filled with Land Rights claims, no easy answers, few settlements are made. An apology would be an admission, with deep regret it is not given. She broke a tribal tradition yesterday. She spoke her dead mother's name, Looking for her sisters, her family. Honorable Mention Here in the salt wind the cedar lifts spires of leaf and branch I lean against its vital shell The vanished heart is dark Wind off the sea weaves my hair into branches Drill with this woodpecker poem a miracle grows green life within the core My clansman stands hollow against the wind while you have become my living heart Honorable Mention Shimmering faint gold, emptied skins of garbanzos flung into a heap litter the white linoleum floor. Emptied skins of garbanzos parrot-peeled litter the white linoleum floor, rich thin surfaces tossed aside. Parrot-peeled as she searches for deeper truth, rich thin surfaces tossed aside, slippery beauty unregarded. As she searches for deeper truth, I walk in to learn how, slippery beauty unregarded; foot-flailing, I fall. I walk in to learn how; I'm a sort of truthseeker, too; foot-flailing, I fall, victim of truth's deceitful surfaces. I'm a sort of truthseeker, too, flung into a heap, victim of truth's deceitful surfaces, shimmering faint gold.
September 2000 First Place Instructive hand, gently write, tenderly erase. With chalk's soft powder trace my outline in the dark. Voiceless mouth, speak unworded language to my ear. Scent my hair with sensate breath like healing herbs. Passionate belief, make worshipful my freefall will. Guide my hands' abrasive heresies to prayer. Favored fruit, ripen slowly in my palm. Reduce the world to this: peach around a stone. Merciful music, draw out my frantic chords. Then sooth my ragged melody into silence. Second Place We start our day with buttered toast and jam, brush our teeth three minutes, up and down, pack a snack and walk to school, hand in hand. Six doors down, the yellow police line trembles; we step across the crackled track of blood and glass, choke on the descending creosote, haze and ash, offer up guilty prayers for the untested grace the smoke detected deliverance. Lisa McNeil, lacking miracles, dies before the fire, her court order no protection against his kerosene soaked rage. Melted paint coagulates; flames rumor through the row-house intimacy, an obscenity of white molded lawn chair legs violates the top story window space. On the corner of Creighton and Gerrish, the sidewalks strewn with tv sets flung from upstairs windows, piles of boxes, kitchen chairs, the bric-a-brac debris surviving tenants saved. Police and paramedics wait while firemen orchestrate their hydrant hose choreography, push out cracked panes with plastic pails, sit on the sidewalk sucking oxygen, return to float through billows of roof obscuring fog and smoke, ministering angels passing over, marking doors and splintering lintels. Third Place Love me when I'm old and shocking Peel off my elastic stockings Swing me from the chandeliers Let's be randy bad old dears Push around my chromed Bath Chair Let me tease your white chest hair Scaring children, swapping dentures Let us have some great adventures Take me to the Dogs and Bingo Teach me how to speak the lingo Bone my eels and bring me tea Show me how it's meant to be Take me to your special places Watching all the puzzled faces You in shorts and socks and sandals Me with warts and huge love-handles As the need for love enthrals Wrestle with my dampproof smalls Make me laugh without constraint Buy me chocolate body paint Hold me safe throughout the night When my hair has turned to white Believe me when I say it's true I've waited all my lives for you Honorable Mention For Joan Houlihan If the beginning comes first, interrupt The jelly with another form of contraception So the panjandrum might be enthroned In theory but imprisoned by practicalities- The jump-rope knotted in a noose, the tantrum On the Isle of Langerhans, a split Chevrolet: Merely foaming sodas of nuance, impertinent Bubbles in the nostrum; but where is my mackinaw? Please, I'm at loose and raving marshmallow. Go figure, no one will notice, the spleen Of even seven heavenly assassins no more Irrigates the tendrils of my tongue Than do the carparks of Westphalia, ham and all. Sadly, not too many grains are left to share, And you look like my granny did the month after she died. At least the napkin lies. I'm elsewhere. Honorable Mention In a place where nothing was permitted, Everything mattered. A sudden quarter note on the E-flat clarinet Could grate upon ungrateful ears. The Plowman Might decide to publish his displeasure. Then a man would disappear; His compositions, Reference to his life and work, His name And all that was of him would vanish. His wife, Removed to Khabarovsk, in time remarried; His children forgot his face. After twenty years the man returned, But not to Moscow. Internal exile dumped him in a village Between the Volga and the Don, and there A position would be found As band director. Of course, everyone understood He knew a lot about the E-flat clarinet. I am not surprised to learn that, During the rehearsal Of his father's Eleventh Symphony, Maxim Shostakovich whispered, "Papa, what if they hang you for this?" Honorable Mention Come into the center of me with that voice of pure molten male oh, Frankie...long gone such as you are I listen to you here in this small space and my heart blooms like a heated rose in paradise Honorable Mention What do piano players do? We leave trails of barrooms empty glasses, full ashtrays, sweaty clothes, spent energy, scattered ex-wives, fistfights, hard blues, latent violence, drugs, glassy stares of hookers, small paydays, late-night television, bad motels, trinkets from famous gigs, worn suitcases, become strangers to morning, field requests with expressionless eyes, slip good songs between commercial tripe, examine new gray hair in distorted backstage mirrors, confide in no one, change clothes, and pour powder into red pimp shoes.
October 2000 First Place Flakes of crab meat impersonate peony petals chopped among vinegar and beaten eggs. Flashes of pink meat snuggle among smooth white mayonnaise. Freckles of pepper corns aromatically crushed. A willow leaf escapes its branch, comes to rest as a centerpiece to elbow macaroni and tri-color twist pasta. It shall be removed immediately. Guests have begun to float in, bob and weave among white islands of triangulated meat spread sandwiches, lacy salad greens, vinaigrettes and oils. Pick and nibble, nibble and pick. I watch through curtains, my hair in a wild quarrel, my blouse not yet pressed. Second Place A knot loosening in his brain has closed the book of expectation. He shuffles for miles in purple tracksuit bottoms, mumbles the thing again and again. What comes out of his mouth defies meaning what matter now are words already spoken. The suits have gone to the charity shop but for one that will do later. The job was good, they let her keep his car it sits in the driveway looking big. He dines on scrambled eggs and meat cut up small, the same for her, she can't be bothered. The bedroom-slipper shimmy the nightly dance she catches him on the street trotting home to mother and partners him back to the room the smell of cigarettes and disinfectant. While she sleeps he shuttles between lock and lock muttering the thing is, some step to be taken, but what? Third Place Football game on TV -- in realtime, long coach-cud-chewing pauses, then quick-snap-pass -- done. . . dust rises . . . In slow-mo replay the players, giant, placid goldfish, bright orange fabric undulates In this slowed-down heaven the way the lord must see things: that pass, after all, interceptible from the start. Honorable Mention Red eye of sunrise yet a hidden menace, Full white the moon and bright the frost as day; Earth's chest pants slowly, ground-mist exhalations; Predators are prowling, Silent high-pitched howling; They shatter mental crystal And shiver dreams away. I'm wakened, drawn towards the ice-thin window, To witness scenes as spare and still as death. How bare the hills; how bare the trees and meadows, Sky's pale-roofed maw, star fangs, Horizon-hinged it hangs; Night's curled lip sneers on shadows Of mountains bared like teeth. Two bow-waves shear the median of the valley, Iced hayfield moves as feral muscles glide; Hoar-frost disturbed by wakes of live torpedoes, Grey shoulders breach and lope, Implode and telescope; They salivate their credos Of chilled and ruthless pride. The wolves tear savage furrows down the dreamland, Their eyes are shined with blood, their mission clear; Grass swings back shocked to green behind their passage: Swift train-less tracks impale The smoky pallid vale, Paired scars in frost their message, The wolves, the wolves passed here. Honorable Mention How can you ask what trick trot trail I came swaggering down or what blue black TV show I inhaled as a child? And then say you know me as a brother? Because brother is not a sex thing even though unclothed you showed your dreamy self to me and asked if what I saw was all right and by that I think you meant the size of your Schwing Dick Shish Kabob Pretzel Peter John Thomas Woody Old one eye Hot tamale Hot potato Hot dog Bow and Arrow Mr. McGilicudy Top Banana Hoopla and Hosanna and I said "Yes of course. It's just fine." Because what else would I say to a poet brother? And besides the size of your manhood looked about right to me. And so I was thinking about how we are all so much skin and touch and breath and voice and five fingers on each hand with smooth carapace fingernails and blood that rushes and trickles and pools at so many times and in so many places. I told you you were beautiful. And you answered me with your feet spread square shoulder length apart and the tips of your black alpaca handmade boots facing straight ahead and your arms hanging steady but at the ready by your sides your chin tipped up just a bit to the right- set for a fight or an assignation with the green hearted trees and the blue knuckled sky and the tar stinking California cedar beating out their universal pulse Life Life Life despite all of our attempts to tame it. And you looked right at me pretending to be blinded by my sunlight and you said "You know you're talking to ugly," and I said, "I don't think so." We exchanged gifts your words for mine your words for pine because that is what I must be doing pining for my long lost poet brother my liter mate or close born miles and days and years apart and who cares about dates or states when you're talking family. And then in my dream I kissed you on your shoulder touched my lips to your skin soft as a boy's just before he steps up to the plate and starts swinging those base hits and homers and batting in those runners and maybe that is why you were there lying naked your flag at half mast or less at best. And when you asked me did I approve? I guess you were really begging me to say "You are my magician." The little black curls of hair around your groin the soft pink nipples on your chest your legs with their tan that went up to here and stopped at the boundary of your now invisible but still so present shorts the white shawl of pale skin around your shoulders the fragrant brown of your arms and the rosy redness of your neck the ark of your flagship Adam's apple, So definitive an instrument for such a powerful speaking. And I said Yes Yes Yes I love you. And then I kissed you in my dream. Honorable Mention Accompanied by the chorus from Greig's Peer Gynt "The Hall of the Mountain King" I want my mother back, the mother I never had and the child I never was, wants one minute facing you. Enough time for momentous ending. To see your eyes, relief in your eyes, and suck what makes me moan out of your irises. Or are you all gland? Between pineal and thyroid is there anything besides seafoam packing delicate alphabet? Do you have eyes at all? And you may ditto me the same. Is she a cask of precious hazelnuts or Montelado? You may ask. Permission to answer withheld. Time won't grant me this request, nor will you, fabled unicorn,tripping in your mask of whale bone, through the Halls of the Mountain King, give me comfort of looking into and closing your porcelain and pinioned eyes. I would pawn the hope of love, with no chance of redemption, I would leave the garden and enter desert in an instant, if you would stand face to face with me and give me the solace of taking it personally. Close, in my presence, this swinging excuse for a door, window on the soul, spray of syrofoam, china cup, etc. All else is small pense. Little thoughts and chewing gum stuck to desks in childhood in my old school Immaculate Heart on Flora Avenue. Honorable Mention From then on I glimpsed her in temporary nests, through the faux-Irish barroom darkness, her and her friends' faces out of Caravaggio; at the corner of a long street in Carolina dusk catching a light, small orange glimmer; scooting through the Y pool like a guppy, distorted underwater, here-and-there; once, chasing a speck of dandelion drift down 9th Street quite slowly -- its sunglistened tips -- cupping her hands around what can't be touched or else the game's over. Honorable Mention For GG I played hide and seek in the dip of his grave, the shade of his marker; and shoved aside hollyhocks to splay, hot and still, with my face in the grass shroud of William. He died on my birthday and was buried by May, beneath the chill thistles where I lay with green fingertips dug in, knees drawn up, ready to quail-burst from cover if my brother should find me. Still William's grave sank with no furor into a subtler foxhole, hiding my green t-shirt and too-bony ribcage from the stutter stop, laughter, my brother's breaths gasping but the flies only found me, crept sideways on Bill's angels, to hide in the crevices or tickle the curve of my back where my shirt rode up, showing a freckle like a thumbtack in my spine.
November 2000 First Place When her mother throws a metal sugar jar at her dad, leaving a dent in the wall, the child appears calm. She has studied Buddha, has chosen to follow his path accepts the dharma, his teachings of peace and moderation. Wearing a yellow robe, she sits in the shade of a fig tree and vows to remain till answers come. Her hair swept up in a wisdom bump. Curls combed to the right. She's drawn a mark between her brows, wheels on her small palms and the soles of her feet. She's in the lotus position. No one in the house notices her absence. A hand fills her rice bowl. She gathers filtered light to bathe her mind, to drown the screams and silences and sweep away spilled sugar. Second Place Dear Sylvia and Anne, We are stuck in your confessional. We can't get out. The marriage of outhouse noise with barnyard pig-grunts stuffs our ears with ugliness. You sculpted your pain onto each page, gaining speed and direction like the terminal thrusts of a rejected lover. You sensed time was short, the long night creeping inside your heads. Yet you sought no creaking door, no key, no light to seep through cracks and direct your retreat from the edge. The air crackles, alive with electroshock. We turn and we turn our feet, retrace each step believed to have led us here but everything known vanishes. We smell carbon monoxide and cooking gas. Somewhere, a bloody sun slips slowly into a mulberry sea. Third Place For Sara Bisel-the Bone Lady You hold the past in wizened fingers, repair crushed fragments with ardent glue, fill in interruptions with dedicated wire, chronicle lives with compassionate centimeters, and uncover stories with sympathetic measured inches. The roughness, bumps, and indentations speak to you, not with words, or flesh, or the language of eyes, but with bone; the core of chalk calling out to be heard. As this woman-girl child keens from her wooden shelf, label bearing a number-- another yellow-plastic sarcophagus thick with the dust of the put-away. You slowly uncase her like a disintegrating cork from an aged port bottle, pieces spilling upon your table. You pause, your ritual of letting bones breathe themselves into life. She lies on the table in a jumble, a heap of complications for you to divulge. You pick up each piece, bathe it carefully in acrylic solution, and replace it. One hundred thousand times you have done this. You revere the repetition of the process. There is method to this, the picking up, the dipping, the drying -- the laying out of bone on bone. Just as there was method to this woman, her hands pressed against the dent of abdomen, to protect the growth within. Like this woman, you know what it is to carry hope inside, like an unborn eggshell child. As you unfold her ancient fingers slowly, gently, she comes alive. It is your passion, this history of bone, this brittle whiteness, the delicate lives... and you, the translator of death. Honorable Mention Throw on alcoholic fathers, grandfathers, lesbian ex-wives, battles with Crown Royal, shaky morning coffee cups, hard blues sweating on the keys, the hooker's unbuttoned blouse, sidewalk nights howling in the rain. I'll learn Scarlatti on the violin, become pure study meditation change the cast of eye till these self-destructive impulses under use this garbage to grow. Honorable Mention The priest knew all the proper words to say. He'd never met her, but he had a note and mentioned everything my uncle wrote. He said she'd had a good life anyway. The old piano that she used to play still holds remembered cadences of those Welsh melodies she loved; but I suppose we'll sell it now that Betty's passed away. I saw her schedules written on a chart pinned to the study wall: she'd meant to speak to Mum, and booked the dentist for next week. It's strange, the little things that break your heart. I'd watched her growing weaker day by day, but never found the proper words to say. Honorable Mention coaches little league, has five kids of his own with hyphenated names, still- I want him. No matter the memories he'd bring to my flesh: tiny hands, or death, slick-flat on a cold slab or rough and tumble in green grass, dark-suited solemn sex or abandoned, sweaty sin- I want him. He zipped my mother up with gentle hands, smoothed back a stray hair- I want her. I want him. Honorable Mention Houses huddling close out of the wind Worn sidewalks Like a Dorchester spared the Exterminating Angels Wheeze of bus brakes like a last deflation of dreams The funny feeling the Vietnamese store signs are laughing at me Open the paper sick with dread Scuse mutters the elephant on my foot Honorable Mention With shrill music, a blue jay calls; echoing the remembered keening of orcas under water. I long for hairy limbs. Want to grow fur all over to warm myself, try to stay whole in the painful memory of rabbit stew eaten down at the beach beside a little fire, with you.
December 2000 First Place Bundy paced his cell, his heart kept constant conversation. The vigil keepers curbside begged Jehovah and the state to spare his life for even monsters can be saved -- (Jehovah crowed). He stopped to look just barely at the stars that would be gone, but the world he knew was made of doe-like eyes and dark brown hair. In worlds he'd known he'd hunted long and heavy chestnut hair. On nights like this, on nights just calm and close enough like this. The virgins he had slain had lain in pools of hair congealing; even now his groin would speak but not repent. A chair, a cot, a spare commode -- a clock. The clock was all. Echoes of the blood beat in the clock upon the stand. His hand was dry. His brain was full. Horrible, the scenes he saw that clawed their way to heaven but in thinking this, he caught his own obscenity of smile. The curbside lambs sang hymns, entrusting God to watch their daughters. while parents of the slaughtered shone like righteous seraphim. At dawn, the warden came -- a priest in tow. Bundy wept his coldest tears, then wondered, if in heaven there be maidens there be maidens lovely maidens with long hair. Second Place Gene speaks of geese, of ducks, with quick sign fists and I must beg him slow his silent speech to match my rusty intellect. He flips his left hand at his waist, a hinged hand beak made of his right, his fingers wild and mute in words like moth-heads beating on hot bulbs. I cannot understand. A door leads out to backyard pastures where the golden bulk of corn that made ducks squabble lies in lines uneaten, framed by feathers. All Gene's birds lie, too, like shredded pillows on the lawn in crimson cases, laundry left undone. Third Place You say I am no longer myself. Who have I become? I stumble on fallen leaves. My soul follows yellow into autumn. Who is still here watching this quiet river? Honorable Mention So serious you are during the day a giraffe an archangel of the brooding hands and the thoughtful glance But let the moon appear. Let the lamps dim one by one And you are transformed into the long eager legs The deep probing kiss the childlike thrill As though it were our first time under this quilt. Honorable Mention I. old witch cackles, like most old witches she is happy the day is warm she is sitting on the lawn chair in my side patio sippin on a cuppa humans, sez she, are a mythical beast they say the pentagram is their symbol they move through the four directions masters of time, sez she they stride through the worlds as if it were their nature they ride the tides of time as if they were dragons and rise from the ashes like a phoenix may I have some more coffee? I rise from my chair like a phoenix blue heron is in me still II. the old witch has rose lotion she is rubbing it on her hands and limbs she has roses on her nightgown she says roses are the lotus of the west humans, sez she, are the five corners everywhere you look are the four directions if you cast them, you think you cast the circle but they are the watchtowers without the spirit they are square you are the secret, you are the mystery but you line your days with dreariness and you stifle your soul with trifles you are the circle, you are the dance you spiral through the air like a wisp of smoke you swirl through the earth like a beautiful stream you dance on the waves like a plume, like a sprite you cast through the fire like the gleam in a mirror you are the mystery, you are the dance within you is the curse within you is the blessing humans, sez she, are the dragons of time could you get me a glass of water? I rise from my seat like a blessing III. everyday I rise like a human I water my plants I feed my pets I put gas in the truck the old witch rides with me to work I don't know what it is she has to do there is a fountain in the square there are humans everywhere sometimes their feelings are like magick I can draw them into figures pentagrams power under the hood IV. I work a working, the work works me I am working a working on loving I am working a working on art I am working a working on money I am working a working on time I am moving through the dimensions I am moving towards something I do not understand I am moving towards the secret I am moving towards the secret I am moving towards the secret I am moving towards myself V. The old witch takes my snake out of her habitat The snake, sez she, is a mythical beast It represents transformation It lives with you, eats, and shits and sheds its skin Destiny, my snake, twirls around her arms and neck I tell you now, sez she, feed this snake well Fini She disappears. No puff of smoke. I am holding my snake, contented. Honorable Mention Bongo, he shed he skin liken fish today become pure like x-ray. Remember he say he would! Oh he be risen. Oh! he be on high. Soon many martyr now arise, been flailed to dead from rat-tail wip in the longgone. I count them fast on my many four finger muching time ago. Remember? Someshout joy, pop liken soap bubble beneath the green moss. jus' a clothing Bongo say green emerald of the far sea. Peter and Paul! And be Luther damnin' good works done slow and weeping payforgrace. See Him Now! Dare one be say fraud, waxeater, shoutout fershit fish not shed skin, no! He shout it out smug. he raise tight fist clench he a red tide arise in he face. I fell called, a calling to comfort him with blows for just that is what miracle becoming, happen, is. But Bongo say NO loudlike and we both nethersayer too watch he shedded skincoat, up so high looken small as wingtissue rising he rise up a blue wind until be speckandgone Honorable Mention The mythos of how the rain and I don't know- there's just the car and the mirror's black thread, or maybe I stay home and think. It falls, falls like fingers tracing their own momentum, with suddenness- runs its random down windowglass, down the path of least naming- Where is the body in relation to this? Now every gesture is louder, past all hearing, past even the chaos of rhythm, sitcom shout- a falling, a darkening, a slammed door of laughter mute as grace, silent as cat- paced deep-pile carpet- and somehow, amidst all this subversion, all I can hear is the kicked stitch of space that is your heart. Honorable Mention "Blake had told her that he would never leave her, and indeed she saw him continually when 'he used to come and sit with her for two or three hours every day...' " --The Blake Records, concerning Catherine Blake's quality of life after her husband's death. Will you dream with me again, William? Yes, Catherine. I will. About the Fall? And Dusk? Yes: late Autumn and evening and the light failing. Tell me then, of the dark. It rises and it scatters among vines and brambles. It pools in the low places, it is still and deepening. Tell me of the wind. It is a prophet, and it trails long robes of cloud about the chimneys, it betrays the coming rains with kisses in our palms. Where are we this time? At the cottage? Yes. At the yardgate, and your hem is tangled in the spades. Our shadows drape the hedgerows, they reach to the walls, they- What do you see? Angels behind the windows, I- -Yes! There!- The curtains billow, fold into wings, there are arcs of light about their shoulders! They press fingers to their mouths. They... Why are you quiet? William, are we inside now? Yes, in the dim. And the rushlight whispers, and the storm has begun a psalm to the thatch. Are you reading to me? Yes, a poem by the candle. Because I cannot. Because the words are winter orchards to you, because they are barren and black about the boughs. And the page is meadow, it is whited with new snow, and my voice thaws blossom from the sleep of the boles. They are falling about the tassels of your shawl. You are radiant among them. You are petal, and where you touch the limbs, prisms shimmer against the dark. I spend the evening speaking worlds to you. You quilt them into throws to gather at my feet. And what after? Sleep. And what of you? I wander. I prepare a kettle and a fire. For morning? Yes, for when you wake and the sky is bluing to the sea, and the day is warming and sparrowsung. I will be waiting then, past the garden gate; you must walk to me softly, your steps will chime bells kept secret in the stones. I will know by your music that you near me. Are these dreams we visit much like Heaven, William? Oh yes, Catherine. Hurry. Close your eyes. |
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