| Author | Message | ||
| MJM
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This is a listing of honors that have been achieved by past and current members of WPF in the InterBoard Poetry Competition (IBPC). This listing dates back to when WPF first started entering the competition in November of 2000, and will be updated accordingly. ------------------------------------------------- December 2000 First Place -- “Last Rites” by Karen Corcoran Dabkowski (Razorwire) -------------------- January 2001 Honorable Mention -- “Common Bond” by Erin L. Ives (Cleo) Honorable Mention -- “The Veteran” by Carole MacRury (Janis) Honorable Mention -- “Grass” by Dawn Pendergast (DawnPen) Honorable Mention -- “December Crumbling” by Ian Marlowe (DS) February 2001 Third Place -- “The O. Henry Cat” by Harolyn J. Gourley (Packrat) Honorable Mention -- “Nibbling Round the Edges of Africa” by Carole Barley (Vienna) March 2001 First Place -- “When Does the First Train Leave for Atlanta” – Gary Blankenship June 2001 Honorable Mention -- “Du” by Janet Kenny August 2001 First Place -- “Insubstantial Air” by Janet Kenny Second Place -- “Return of the Currawongs” by Janet Kenny September 2001 Honorable Mention -- “Humidity” by Carole Barley (Vienna) October 2001 Third Place -- “The Ponderous Galapagos Turtle” by Charles Levenstein ------------------------- February 2002 Honorable Mention -- “Rain Snapshots at the Beach” by Janet Kenny May 2002 Honorable Mention -- “Remembrance of Silence” by Ian Marlowe (DS) June 2002 Second Place -- “Communion with the Deceased” by M August 2002 Third Place -- “Impossible Grace” by T.E. Ballard (Treezaa) October 2002 Third Place – “Painting the SS America” by Carole Barley (Vienna) December 2002 Honorable Mention – Promise of August’s Renewal” by Maryann Hazen Stearns -------------------------- January 2003 Second Place – “Visiting his Aunt, Christmas 2002” by Laurie Byro (Lauriette) March 2003 Honorable Mention – “Albumin” by T. E. Ballard (Treezaa) April 2003 Poem of the Year -- First Place – “Communion with the Deceased” by M June 2003 Second Place – “A Letter to My Sister” by T. E. Ballard (Treezaa) July 2003 First Place - "Life on the Row" by M September 2003 Third Place - "Reflections on a Japanese Screen in a Carlton Apartment" by Lorin Ford (nellie melba) October 2003 Second Place -- "The Camp" by Marty November 2003 First Place -- "Sacrifice, Leaves and Whippoorwills" by T. E. Ballard (Treezaa) -------------------------- June 2004 Third Place -- "Fate" by Steve Williams August 2004 First Place -- "Penelope and the Bird Man" by Laurie Byro / Ivan Waters October 2004 Second Place -- "Standing Before a Teacher" by Gary Blankenship December 2004 First Place -- "Searching for Poe's Grave on Halloween, Baltimore, MD" by Jim Doss -------------------- June 2005 Honorable Mention -- "On Finding Trilliums" by Kathy Paupore July 2005 Poem of the Year -- Second Place -- "Penelope and the Bird Man" by Laurie Byro/Ivan Waters ---------------------- November 2006 Second Place -- "The Murderer Next Door" by Steve Williams --------------------- March 2007 Honorable Mention -- "Caisa Thorbjornsdotter" by Jana Bouma June 2007 First Place -- "Bad Weather" by Dale McLain August 2007 First Place -- "After Howl III -- Rockin' the Ages" by Gary Blankenship Honorable Mention -- "immeasurable" by Dale McLain October 2007 Honorable Mention -- "Ungodly Apartment Building" by Teresa White November 2007 Third Place -- "The Gravity of it Beautiful" by Melanie G. Firth ------------------------ January 2008 Honorable Mention -- "Redcap" by Sarah J. Sloat March 2008 Honorable Mention -- "The Season of Science" by M. E. Silverman April 2008 Poem of the Year -- First Place -- "bad weather" by Dale McLain May 2008 Honorable Mention -- "fountain" by Douglas Hill July 2008 First Place -- "Feast of Disappointments" by Laura Cable Honorable Mention -- "Aftertaste" by Brenda Morisse September 2008 First Place -- "St. Louis Jim" by Henry Shifrin (Hephaestes) Second Place -- "Saturday" by S. Thomas Summers October 2008 Honorable Mention -- "Imagination of the Deflated Balloon" by Henry Shifrin --------------------- April 2009 Honorable Mention -- "Baseball Season" by Andrew Dufresne May 2009 Honorable Mention -- "Her obituary picture will look nothing like her" by Alex Stolis July 2009 Honorable Mention -- "Stephanie" by Kathleen Vibbert August 2009 Honorable Mention -- "my name is river" by Derek Richards Honorable Mention -- "true romance in black and white" by Alex Stolis September 2009 Third Place -- "Illegal #2" by Sergio Ortiz ------------------- January 2010 Honorable Mention -- "Wig" by Michael Harty February 2010 Second Place -- "A Question of Nakedness" by Melanie Firth March 2010 Third Place -- "Everything will be permitted, nothing will be desired" by Laura Ring Honorable Mention -- "Lot" by Richard Moorhead April 2010 Third Place -- "Caring for Your Gimp" by Henry Shifrin ------------------------------------------------- Monthly Competition: First Place Wins: 11 Second Place Wins: 9 Third Place Wins: 10 Honorable Mentions: 27 Poem of the Year: First Place: 2 Second Place: 1 ------------------------------------------------- . | ||
| Silvia Brandon Perez
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Wow, that is tremendously impressive... Congratulations for the old wins and the wins sure to come! | ||
| MJM
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And here are the actual poems. I thought they might be of interest to those in our membership who would like to study and learn from them. December 2000 First Place Author: Karen Corcoran Dabkowski Title: “Last Rites” 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. -END- -------------------------------------------------- January 2001 Honorable Mention Title: “Common Bond” Author: Erin L. Ives For two years she's been here, smiling at me (a disenchanted daughter) -- and still, she ends up with salt water sighs and helpless condolences just like mine. She's got that rock bottom look and I don't know how to tell her that she'll wrestle wishbones and bargain with nose-diving needles that never sleep. Together, we sit on the fatherless side of the room, whispering about identity while waiting for one of those palisade moments to chase away the obvious with good news. I know the difference between spilling sadness and standing in it, but I've had two years to dissect that sentence -- she'll offer an olive branch when reveries and resentment lapse into reality. Maybe someday she'll ask me if anniversaries chip away at limits or slice into sensible tempos, and I'll try not to swallow the truth. -END- ********** Honorable Mention Title: “The Veteran” Author: Carole MacRury Walking with shortened steps he carries his bones with care, fingers flexing air; his lips a rictus of concentration. A fossil gripping fists of rain, sounding off his aches and pains he counts cadence; marches to his last bastion, "The Legion" and his regimental bottle of ale. In control, he sips through palsied lips, then eases to his feet, fortified for the trip back home. An old soldier trying to sustain home rule, he goes AWOL each afternoon, as nurses turn their backs in silent salute. -END- ********** Honorable Mention Title: “Grass” Author: Dawn Pendergast She was kneeling, her small white feet tucked tenderly 'neath her thighs. Her hands, summer-blasted, grabbed up the ground, green blades poking 'tween those crazy fingers. Then she lay it down again slow slowly, in soft green heaps -- like a fragile corpse -- to rest. I watched her on a nearby bench, through a swirl of smoke. Smiling at my own crazy fingers, clutching my own grass. -END- ********** Honorable Mention Title: “December Crumbling” Author: Ian Marlowe December is crumbling under the wandering eye of a scurrilous sun, like dirty snowflakes we digress into the mundane: You with those emotions that get in the way of that and this and I mumbling condolences for the way things often go as we spit-trip on colloquialism while the world revolves on its complacency with six billion passengers pondering the Rorschachian legend on a crease-strewn map gone through too many fingers, passed among too many hands -- We are as molecules humping in the night, replete in our randomness, chaotic in our endeavor, as particular as the drivel on the lips of a feral god trying to wipe us clean with the back of its hairy hand -- And we are back to you and I with this and that as randomness goes stiff like the rods and cones in my wandering eyes. As always, I will try not to notice the spittle on your too full lips and what goes on there as December crumbles and six billion molecules find their libidos in the dark. -END- -------------------------------------------------- February 2001 Third Place Title: “The O. Henry Cat” Author: Harolyn J. Gourley (a.k.a., Packrat) My neighbours had an ancient cat -- Aged twenty years, at least -- And though they coaxed her every day, This 'independent' beast Would never step inside their door -- No 'house-cat' shame had she -- But took her meals upon their porch; A true-born cat, and free. From whence she came, no man can tell; Her genesis -- mystique. The neighbours found her as a youth, Sun-warmed and sound asleep; Upon their father's grave she'd lain (Sweet hour of paws repose) And brought her home to Hamlen St.-- For luck, I would suppose. They called her "Sniff" and learned to live According to her ways, And more than once they shook their heads And thought they'd rue the day; For what's the use to keep a cat Who'd never come inside? But, she was "independent" And they'd just have to abide. And, in her prime, she was a lion To four-foot, beak and wing. She stalked and pounced and thrilled to life-- Just listen to her sing! And though she'd never step inside Their lowly, human house, In all the time she graced their lives They never saw a mouse! Through years of hunts and dawn patrols And footpad-silent nights, Of sunny porch and shady bow'r That were a cat's delight, She held her own and made her way -- Her cat-soul ne'er was "bought" -- For, she was "independent", Just in case you had forgot! Now, cats are territorial And this one, true to form, Patrolled the borders of her world In weathers cold or warm. Across the street, my auntie lived -- My aunt, who had no cat -- So Sniff decided to make sure She'd never see a rat! Two houses, then, became her ward -- She'd rest beneath the porch. Whenever strangers ventured near, Her protest she'd send forth. And, oh, the noise that cat could make, Her challenge roaring out! She'd keep my aunt's integrity -- Of that, there was no doubt. And thus the seamless years slid by 'Til I, at length, came home To care for Auntie -- in decline; Too soon, I was alone. But, no, not quite, for every time I stepped upon the walk, The guardian beneath the porch Let out her fearsome squawk. I'd smile and shake my head and say, "Go on -- I live here, now." And Sniff would sniff, as if to say, "Behave yourself, or, POW!" I never yelled or chased her off, Though Pride, betimes, was stung; For years she'd faithfully kept guard -- She'd earned the weight she swung. And Sniff was getting on in age -- Her years were plain to see; Her coat was thick and matted, And she'd slowed, to some degree. More often now, upon the porch, She'd stretch out in the sun And soak the heat up as she slept -- We seldom saw her run. A year ago this spring, things changed-- At first, I was perplexed; For she'd appear upon my porch And howl in tones quite vexed. ‘Til fin'ly I took the hint And set a dish outside; Then Sniff would breakfast, quite content, While I went back inside. A week of this, and I called Deb To see if she'd declined To feed the old cat anymore, But, no, Sniff, double-dined! Within a month she went no more To Deb, across the street; It seemed that now my porch was where Sniff chose to take her meat. We laughed about it, Deb and I, And 'cause I'm life-long poor, Deb bought the cat food I'd serve up When Sniff came to my door. And through the summer days it went, And still, when autumn came; I served this ragged, scruffy cat That never had been tamed. And 'twas no easy service, for When Sniff, to need, gave voice, Her strident call could shake the walls -- Refusal was no choice, And in a while it dawned on me -- The reason she was loud -- That years of ear-mite damage Had reduced this cat, once proud. If Sniff was looking at you And she saw her dish in hand, She'd hasten to receive it, And she'd think it mighty grand. But if you were behind her And she didn't see her host, She wouldn't know you answered -- She was near-deaf as a post. 'N' we'd often see her stagger, If she took a sudden step, For her balance, too, was shattered By the gunk down in the depths. I'd have to stomp upon the boards -- She'd feel me shake the porch; Then, blithely, she would turn around To see what I'd brought forth. When winter came, with bitter winds, For once she seemed, inclined To show some int'rest in the hall That, from me, stretched behind. And I thought, if she'd just come in, To take her bit of sup, At least while she was eating, Just for then, she could warm up. I held the door and showed the dish And coaxed her to come in, But she demurred and would not step Inside my human den. But when I propped the door ajar And left her to her pride -- Before I'd reached the kitchen, that Old cat had come inside. And sometime after Christmas (This had gone on, now, for weeks) More often she would snooze a while Before the door she'd seek. And soon it wasn't she who'd howl -- There wasn't any doubt; She seldom asked to be "set free,” 'Twas me who'd put her out. Then, all at once, the "light came on," As daybreak lights the dawn, 'N' the insight came that clued me in To what was going on. And I recalled a story that, I think, O. Henry penned About an aging hired hand And how he'd met his end. The details, I could not recall; The point was graven deep and, long a-slumber in my soul, Awakened from its sleep. I knew, deep down, that it was thus Between this cat and I -- This life-long "independent" Had come home to me, to die. This scruffy lump of matted fur With cloudy, rheumy eye, This aging unrepentant who Had never come inside, This poor infested, wretched scrap Who'd seen and done it all Had come to me for refuge And the hospice of my hall. Was ever there such compliment (Though few would recognize), Such gift of trust and confidence As shone in this one's eyes? The trusting quest for simple acts That cannot be repaid; A load to bear -- because you're there -- With nothing gained in trade? Of course, you know the cat moved in; Her bowls sat in the hall. She slept in an old reed basket With a blanket to cover all. And though she'd never been so trained, My doubts, aside, were torn, For she took to the kitty-litter box As if to the Manor born. Through winter's term she seldom left Except on sunny days, When she would lay her weary bones To soak up winter rays. By then, she'd let me pet her, though 'Twas only on her head; The mat she wore was stiff and hard -- 'Twas less alive than dead. And, Lord, she was the sweetest thing You'd ever want to know; And once she gave her heart away, She quickly let me know -- She'd purr and tried to rub my legs, Though often she would lurch, For when she'd brush against her ears, 'Twas plain it really hurt. So, me, I got the neighbour girl To come and help me out. She held the cat -- at full arm's-length -- I worked back from her snout, And clipped and snipped and did my best To clear a petting path. (I hoped, if I could get her shorn, One day we'd try a bath!) The day I cleared her, stem to stern -- Three inches wide, the back -- I feared for my composure, for It very nearly cracked. I drew my hand from nose to tail O'er fragile, parchment skin That long had missed the air and light Her mat had not let in. At first, she jumped; then, with a sigh (I swear I heard it so!) She arched her back and purred and purred, And would not let me go. It had been years since she had Truly felt the least caress. She fell asleep upon my lap, And I knew that I'd been Blessed. This spring I took her to the vet.'s And, yes, it cost me dear; But at night I'd hear her crying For her mite-infested ears. And lately she had suffered much -- A tooth had been abscessed -- And how she'd ever fought it off, Well, only God could guess. She took it well and soon forgave Those gross indignities, But I knew, by then, that time was short -- 'Twas but a brief reprieve. With summer soon, and warmer days, She took to going out; And in, and out, and in again -- She darn near wore me out! I confess that I turned stubborn, When the day's last light would fall; Then I took my turn at being "deaf" And didn't hear her call. For the streets about turned busy, and She was so deaf and slow, To die in pain and fear and shock, 'Twould be too cruel a blow. Then June arrived, and balmy nights Brought scented memories; And Sniff so wanted to go out Upon Midsummer's Eve. The moon was full, her heart was gay -- 'Twas purr-fect for a stroll; I scratched her back and petted her And then, I let her go. My mind's eye sees her sniff the air That fluffs her new-grown fur, And walks with her along the track Where feathers fly and fur, Like downy puffs, explodes in fright -- I hear the squeak arrest. Then, to a well-belov'ed den Where, paws tucked to her chest, She snuggles in some cozy lair Where she had passed her years -- A little nap,to catch her breath, In calm repose from fears. And, dreaming, hear as every branch Pours bird-song on the sward; And somewhere down the Paw-Twitch path She passed to her reward. I know there's those who'll think that I'm A sucker for all that; That, 'twas a sin I was beguiled By an old and dirty cat. For she was unrepentant And she never stooped to please, But I can't begrudge that weary dam Those last few months of ease. Look, poverty's an awful thing, When riches we don't merit, But it seems to me the worst would be That poverty of spirit That makes us choose to turn away In someone's hour of need. Don't all those rules just make us fools, When we've no charity? For know that, someday, you and I Will wish a gentler penance; For a scrap of rug and a warming mug We'll trade our independence. And hope that life will give us leave To come in from the weather And grant us each that bit of ease, Before we're gone forever. -END- ********** Honorable Mention Title: “Nibbling Round the Edges of Africa” Author: Carole Barley Gerald of course, was to blame for all of this. Late night torchlight forays in Crete led innocently to a meeting with a man he had been whispering with all along. Everything, they said, was just so. I had a pressed cardboard satchel and always grubby ankle socks, but that was to be expected when every evening whispered Africa and we had been emptying calabashes of palm wine and conga-ing in the Congo with the Fon of Bafut all night. They sat me away from the windows at school. I drew ring-tailed lemurs in algebra books and wondered if Miss Pritchard ever got the urge to go collecting in the Cameroons. Geography was all industrial hinterlands and demographics, Germany never really caught my imagination. I filtered rain from jungle canopies through my fingers, ran barefoot with cheetahs in the vast orange bowl of the Serengeti. I remember riding a bony Arabian somewhere near Aswan, in one hundred and thirty degree heat, struggling with swatches of remembered French, squinting my eyes to catch the sails of silent feluccas gliding the Nile. I remember Morocco. I am saving the jungles for later; but not so late that I am too old to dance naked but befeathered in the snake shadows of tribal fires. And I will know that cane-rats make good eating, that salt kills leeches, that bushbabies will stare moonily through tangle-dark llianas, and smile. -END- -------------------------------------------------- March 2001 First Place Title: “When Does the First Train Leave for Atlanta?” Author: Gary Blankenship red dirt or yellow clay did not clog our lives or ruin the wash in ‘49 our world was colored gray and stained brown from granite gravel and Cascade mud 3000 miles from the red hills of Georgia too few years gone by too many blowouts ‘long the way for Grandpa to quit fighting long-dead feuds with cheap whiskey and bad beer too few curves and passes too many cold nights and hot days hoeing beans for Grandma to accept his fight was real as her 16 babies and not an old drunk’s raves In our town in 1949, there were no what we now lump together as minorities. No coloreds, Indians, or Mexicans. No one with a name that ended in vowels or started with Gold. There were Catholics, but mostly they were German. Smedley’s Pass was white folk on the road to nowhere and not in any hurry to get there. Farmers and loggers and a few veterans trying to forget the war. in ‘49 they sent Dot to the sanitarium Buddy drowned in Willow Lake Carl lost his arm in a mill accident Henry screamed in his sleep about killing Japs Alice lost a boy-baby Frank packed up his family and moved to San Diego Grandpa swore at Grandma for not getting the red and yellow mud cleaned off his boots that he couldn’t take Livie to the dance looking like no hick hill farmer mud on his boots Grandma prayed for the crazy old man to die prayed for the Lord God Jesus to forgive her for those evil thoughts for sins past and yet to come in ‘49 I was seven years old and lived with my grandparents. Within a half day’s walk lived three uncles, two aunts, and several grown cousins. I spent a fair amount of time hiking to their houses and sleeping under the stars, listening to coyotes and hoot owls. Henry, unmarried, lived with us. Dorothy had been until she got the TB. white trash not quite there were too many war heroes dairy farmers and logging truck drivers in the family to be considered white trash and by marriage a bookkeeper a forest ranger the owner of the Smedley’s Pass Café and the best auto mechanic in town and we weren’t okies or arkies just Georgia clay which had birthed Cascade mud for sixty-odd years but we were close In 1949, I found out how close. Sundays, the women and a few of the older men went to church, babies and the girl-children in tow. Us boys would have to go unless we could find an excuse, like helping Uncle Willie with haying or Aunt Hilda’s husband fix his bulldozer. This Sunday, I had to help Grandpa and Henry find the Jersey milker, who had wandered into the woods to calf. the west woods nettles and thistle blackberry and blackcap at the edges hemlock oregon grape scrub alder and hazelnut inside (Grandpa carried a flask Henry the shotgun in case bears caught the Jersey’s scent I’d snuck a few cookies from the cupboard) brambles from one end to the other where giant fir once towered by the creek skunk cabbage salmonberry devils club (she would head to the water always did I, small enough to get under the brush would be the first to find her always was) to my left Grandpa and Henry sought an easier path followed a deer trail to the creek to my left I heard them arguing (I could see Grandpa pulling on the flask could see Henry’s grip tighten could hear…) In 1949, towns as small as Smedley’s Pass were as stratified as any Hindu city. Families as large as ours were even more so. Mabel, married to the café and Paula to the bookkeeper, thought they were better than Sally with her father’s disease or Olive married to a gypsy logger. Unwed mothers and bastard children at the bottom of the family heap. you shiftless sum-bitch milkin’ battle fatigue stress my ass you’re just a lazy bastard old man shut your filthy mouth you don’t be calling me no bastard you don’t be talking that way about mama you don’t know nothing you stupid kid you think I don’t know the bitch was humping with my brother why do you think I waited for him on the jacksonville road and why do you think he’s buried in red and yellow clay ‘stead of brown mud SHUT UP YOU OLD SON OF BITCH SHUT UP BEFORE I (I could see Henry’s fingers on the trigger I could see Grandpa reach for the shotgun, I could see the jersey breech-birthing by the creek when I heard…) you as much a bastard as that sissy boy of Clara’s In 1949, I now understood why the kids at school whispered behind my back, and why I’d best stay away from some of the older kids. I understood that the difference between an Okie and a drunk Georgia redneck was far less than the 60 years that separated them when they first stepped into brown Cascade mud. in ‘49 they buried Henry in the valley plot Grandma went to live with Mabel her world confined to broadcasts of the Reverend Jimmy Tomlison of the Church of Living Fires of Atlanta Georgia and I with Olive in ‘49 Grandpa sat on the porch of the house where his children were birthed and watched Henry and the Jersey die until he could not tell which was which in ‘51 Dorothy was buried next to Henry I caught rheumatic fever and Mother came home for Dorothy’s funeral married to another Hank from over Bartown way -END- -------------------------------------------------- June 2001 Honorable Mention Title: “Du” Author: Janet Kenny A wisp of old woman, curved like a scythe, tottered to me as she fussed her shopping, her walking stick hooked on her chopstick wrist. She spoke to me then in a dried leaf voice. Inaudible there in that busy street, swept by rude gales from passing trucks. I leaned closer to hear: Mein eyes not gut. time for bus, ven comes it? “Which bus do you want?” She smiled, shook her head, then sang to herself and somebody else in – not German. Yiddish? “Which bus?” She leaned towards me, her tiny claw reached to stroke my face. Du, she said. Du. -END- -------------------------------------------------- August 2001 First Place Title: “Insubstantial Air” Author: Janet Kenny It was no accident we wandered here, away from suburbs and from traffic din, we needed to be somewhere free to clear the dust and doldrums that remained within. The sweet vivacity of birds in heath land high above the sea as sky was wide, while quails in coveys bumbled round our feet, and sunlit straight escarpments on each side proclaimed our isolation from the great metropolis that seemed so out of place, like some Atlantis that might disappear without a noise, leaving not a trace. Incredible the silence and the vast expanse of air, like Prospero’s desmesne, all insubstantial moving light that clasped each image and refracted it again. And we felt no surprise when downward came transparent parachutes in graceful fall from out the belly of an ancient plane, illuminated beings held in thrall by Prospero’s enchantment, captive ghosts that drifted slowly down till hid from view and the surrounding dreamscape of the coast forgot the aeroplane and floating crew. Below the cliffs the water came and went in lacey patterns overlapping those that came before, incessantly intent on black and white kaleidoscopic shows. Our need for earth’s connection is so strong we sicken if deprived of wilderness, and if we stew in cities for too long we dwindle to adapt to our address. Wizened homunculi we all forget our ancestors emerged from out the wet; and fire and ice will each suffice, says Frost. We gained our cities but the rest is lost. -END- ********** Second Place Title: “Return of the Currawongs” Author: Janet Kenny Out of the sea-fog currawongs came back after an absence in the mountains; great black clanging birds, they sought clear air and found my bird table with smaller birds assembled, as yet unaware that fate had ended their security. I heard the trumpet tones and matched responses, saw the dark shapes in the branches and more swooping through the sky; uproarious jubilation ringing high, they celebrated their return to where they fed last spring and summer. Here they now could rear their hungry young until, as hoodlum birds the youngsters soar to mountain forests to absorb the law. -END- -------------------------------------------------- September 2001 Honorable Mention Title: “Humidity” Author: Carole Barley Seemingly endless, this August rain, fashioning rats-tails and the scent of electricity in treacle-humid air. The wipers flail, damp palms finger gearstick with some smiled upon urgency; Interior windows misted. You say you do not care for warm rain; I see a kneeling in ocean scented grass. Thigh inside thigh, rivulets rounding shoulder, growing heavy; slowing, crazing down the switchback of your arm. I do not care for gray myself, prefer the terror of cumulonimbus uncertainty. Touchpaper, flint. Counting the seconds to myself between the flash and the thunder. -END- -------------------------------------------------- October 2001 Third Place Title: “The Ponderous Galapagos Turtle” Author: Charles Levenstein The ponderous Galapagos turtle lies on his belly, munches greens, contemplates time, how wondrous it seems: When I was a youth did I stand on my feet, arms akimbo? Did I despise my fat parents and the rocks from which they came? Was I a boy preoccupied with copulation? Did I join up to save the nation? Did I develop a sneer? Did I know why I was here? Of course not. Turtles don't go on the road, we enjoy our isle, reproduce in a pile, then eat a lot, or as much as we can get. Kelp's not boring, plenty to do right here without running off. Poor humans with their cameras. And the wheel. And the sail. And fire, of course. They start out stupid and must be tended, rear ends wiped, clothing mended. At twenty, though, they know everything there is to know. Time seems slow on my Galapago. I swim, I think, I have another drink. Thus spake the turtle, beached on his belly. Time has not made him particularly wise and he's become too tough to eat. -END- ------------------------------------------------------------ | ||
| MJM
|
February 2002 Honorable Mention Title: “Rain Snapshots at the Beach” Author: Janet Kenny i Pearl sky purples above dark rocks as rain arrives to drench the beach. Shadow now where sun was. A scene- change for melodrama, with lights, thunder, and rushing figures. ii Addicted swimmers linger in hissing waves as they greet the deluge. Even Venus loafs in warm sea, careless of wetness where elements merge, her loose red hair dank seaweed-green. iii Tall, bellied grandfather, stork-legged, frets by the ocean edge, afidget at children who stay in amniotic security, more known than remembered. He half recalls sliding in waters. iv Sad fat man in black, soaked no longer by sun, slowly rises from the sand, and squelches, bubbling in thongs, for solitary beer and fish. Always another way to flee melancholy. v Sea and clouds latticed with light subtly surpass public fireworks but unsung, play to an empty house. Stray worshippers applaud silently, and smile recognition without words. Nothing much has happened here apart from things that matter. -END- -------------------------------------------------- May 2002 Honorable Mention Title: “Remembrance of Silence” Author: Ian Marlowe I am positive I will misquote a deaf friend by writing this, the same as I'll reassemble Einstein by saying we can never declare abstinence from light, never transcend the velocity of its particulars – we will never know the meaning of true silence. At a relevant point in time everything we love becomes grounded in sound; even in death, nerve endings become believers in resurrection, in the echoed cadence of blood marching within oppressed veins. Life is never that forgiving. Stars will implode in less time than it takes us to answer rhetorical questions unhinged from cluttered tongues. "Do you love me?" takes on the din of "Do you want me?" The context becomes lost between the dream and the awakening. Eventually we fall back on remembrance and how it felt groping for wind inside the womb, how the agenda centered a round what a hum would look like outside the skin. We remember it as ghost chant through walls: the sweep of palm against belly, the resistance of breath through pores upon hearing the first lullaby rock light to sleep. Yet for all this ventless effort, we fear conformity to solitude. We whistle a song to turn back its onset, file "love" under "lust" in the process, confuse "sacrifice" with "redemption." Everything else we swat at with brooms as we would a bee trapped in some dusty closet of the brain. Always, we'll tilt our heads searching for the next buzz, ponder how many fingers it takes to tune false ribs, consider how mouths can hold more consonants than teeth. -END- -------------------------------------------------- June 2002 Second Place Title: “Communion with the Deceased” Author: M Tell me something. What good could have come from this? I’m prone in a wildflower field in Eagle, Colorado. I have bourbon in my glass and I don’t drink. I feel queasy. There is a gathering of people behind me under a rented canopy, the white ones used for weddings and times like these. All of them knew you better than they know me. They carry canapés in their hands, stories of your exploits on their lips, undigested grief in that tender spot below the breastbone. I’m speaking to the knapweed and they pretend there’s nothing wrong with that because they’ve already decided I’m deranged. What could I have told her about her late father that she wouldn’t have already known? That a blackball in the bloodstream is as inheritable as your fear of water, your love of Escher, your proclivity for laughter? That we ignored the risks of genetic disease, birthed her anyway? What good could have come of her being? Better to know we loved her well enough to leave well enough alone. It is mid June. The lupine are late to bloom this high in the hills and there is no child who requires an explanation of love and death. Nor to lose to them either. No stranger at a wake need lead her away from a mother who lays in the dirt. All this is easier without her than with her. It is, isn’t it? Speak to me. -END- -------------------------------------------------- August 2002 Third Place Title: “Impossible Grace” Author: T. E. Ballard My neighbors are having a funeral, firecrackers pop and boom. Laughter reaches my window licks the frame. It is strange to realize fire is pain. Natives celebrate life with loss and I think of the baby, her tiny body thrown from a car like paper; a bird of print floating down to the road left behind. She is fire, soft hiss of a match, she is the tiny puppy on the grass, the one bought for a sister who was driving but who now sits, her hands reaching out for wet puppy fur, tiny yelps of need. I have heard of this before buying life for someone who wants death, pulling them back to earth. A mother is in some hospital bed, close to here, if she has a window, bends her neck she will see light. My children are rope, two knots that hold me down when nothing is left, no choice but to swallow, continue on. The mother and I are the same and yet we’re not, she has entered a world which haunts my sleep in shouts and dreams-- she is beyond loss. People offer her strings of possibility, she is young, they speak of stories of women who grow from fire like trees and I know this is what she fears. Life without rope, and how shadows and shapes are more real than a daughter wrapped in tar, a tiny figure of Grace flying away. -END- -------------------------------------------------- October 2002 Third Place Title: “Painting the SS America” Author: Carole Barley I paint her like this, from a low angle, waterline; she towers in cobalt and a potion of ultramarine and vermillion; devoured by darks, dazzle-disappearing in light. She glides towards me, I feint and play, brushstrokes suggestive of a New York dockyard past midnight. She is there and not, dismissive of the tug that braves the nearness of her bow, she is here yet gone, ethereal and beribboned in autumnal mist, funnels reflected red in the deep and surge of pthalo blue, faint memory of almost white where water, sliced , shows angst. Born into turmoil, sleek lady greyhound of the Atlantic, elegance and quiet power. I am creating a sky without stars in my homage, glint of floodlights, a full tide and the ever-open gates of horizon. My hands are marked with your colours, involuntary stripe of pigment over cheek; I create you again and again, art deco years ago until now, as you sway imperceptibly in the reef you chose to be your home. Broken but unbowed, your port tilt of dying Overflown by gulls, overseen by the painter whose bones will rest someday near your own. -END- -------------------------------------------------- December 2002 Honorable Mention Title: “The Promise of Augusts’ Renewal” Author: Maryann Hazen Stearns A brief glimpse of her in the market the flash of recognition on her face and the time finally came when I remembered She deliberately turned away as if I would hasten to strike up a crisp conversation the tart apple of her eye her lips puckered tightly on an ancient misunderstanding of the worst sort her four-year-old son in my inexperienced care that quiet summer day that after-nap changing the warm drone of bees and katydids sifting through the screen the fresh green ivy pattern of white lazy quilt in the upstairs bedroom cleaning gently his small boyness the tissue bits that clung persistently to his meek damp skin the ineffective powder lumps my exasperation my tsking tongue the sigh of a whimper as I looked up the tiny forehead creased below a wisp of blonde wavelet my heart as it wrenched to stone the terribly soft young voice whispering the obviously rehearsed dialogue to say in such a situation please don't touch my private place my hand jerking back my lips which muttered incessantly oh sweetie I'm sorry so sorry sorry hands shaking uncontrollably as I tried to replace a clean diaper regardless of tissue bits, piss or private parts the heart pounding blur of that horrid afternoon until five o'clock pick-up and finally the phone call next morning her curt voice which informed me she'd no longer be needing my services the instantly dead phone cradled in my limp hand before I'd had a chance to explain the unexplainable that no good parent would believe the undeserved shame I felt the anger at feeling defenseless and then out of the blue they moved away and time went on and on the memories and mysteries the moment-to-moment minute-by-minute years until her face turned away in the market today and the face of a young blonde man at her side turned and held my eye like a warm ripe peach in a hot August orchard and smiled -END- -------------------------------------------------- | ||
| MJM
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January 2003 Second Place Title: “Visiting his Aunt, Christmas 2002 (Green Holly Man)” Author: Laurie Byro The rivers have frozen, yet beneath the ice, turtles and fish swim in slow motion— a silent ballet, undistracted by the jubilant world. At night, we skate beneath stars that pirouette closer. The motion above and below suspends us as if we were fish, struggling to breathe, struggling to keep from becoming stones. Last year, trying to escape the cold— we snuck off to the barn, to hear the lowing of the animals. But the dark with its mossy warmth greeted us with another legend, and the green holly man startled us from his perch up in the rafters. This night, we are cagey, fearless. A flask of whiskey has made us bold. You tie up my laces, wrap a long red scarf round and round. You kiss my forehead, warm my neck with wool muffled breath. We skate through a skeleton of trees, sentinels to a deeper forest. We stop at a boulder we know by its graffiti, pause to take a swig, your eyes merry as you tell me to look up at the cobwebbed sky. We’ve dared each other before. I suck your bottom lip, taste the smoky malt. Birds mate in the trees, branches fill with eyes. Your arms are thorned as you pass the flask. Your eyes glow red. The trees rustle, your face scratches as you kiss me, whispering “Happy Christmas.” I remember the bitter taste of you. You crush one berry in my mouth. –END- -------------------------------------------------- March 2003 Honorable Mention Title: “Albumin” Author: T. E. Ballard I think of an egg. A loon’s offering tied to the center of my breasts like the eye of a Cyclops. Always seeing, always looking somewhere. It is this egg I think of, carried the summer I was ten with ten thousand others buried deep in the pockets of my ovaries, waiting. Waiting like a child for a bird to fly out of her chest; a gryphon, a phoenix or some other magical beast. These are the things I remember; this and the sour smell of my shirt after possibility had died. How I drew the needle across the center and poked a hole, blew out the placenta like the tongue of a lizard and the clear line which held death. I painted the white shell in blue, then red drew small flowers, tied their stems into intricate patterns, carefully, in case I was wrong. –END- -------------------------------------------------- April 2003 Poem of the Year -- First Place Title: “Communion with the Deceased” Author: M (See June 2002) -------------------------------------------------- June 2003 Second Place Title: “Letter To My Sister” Author: T. E. Ballard In my dream I wore two pockets around my neck. The first opened to a daughter made of clear petals. She was air floating through our fingers. I named her yours and we were happy and if we shaped our hands around her head as a cradle we almost felt the soft spot on her skin. The other pocket broke into two sons the first healthy, screaming like a man the second, his mouth stuffed with blood like a child born when I was awake and there was no way to close my eyes. But in this dream, he is mine and I remove the dark mucus from his mouth. He breathes, a small fish begging for air. I desire to give these children to your body like rain to dry land. Yet in this place I know what is yours and what is not. I nurse two boys on the tips of my breasts while you rock the air with a child who bears no weight. -END- -------------------------------------------------- July 2003 First Place Title: "Life on the Row" Author: M "You are and you aren't a part of the larger whole around you. You form friendships and your friends die. You dream and your dreams die." -- Caryl Chessman, executed May 2, 1960, San Quentin It is always night at the ocean in my mind, with a moon so full, it hangs too low in the picture frame sky like overripe fruit, burdensome for the branch. Take a bite. Be saturated with the taste of residual heat and monoi oil. It is always winter in the tropics in my mind, with a fan so large, it moves too slow in the little thatched hut like molten rock, born to form this place. Close your eyes. You are the root of breadfruit and tiare tahiti. There are always guests at the table in my mind, with tales so bold, they grow too wild in the dining room like uncivilized weeds, increasing in complexity. Drink your tea. Follow them to the core of the black-lipped oyster’s womb. Beyond the bars of my cage I hear them talk, the guard in the grease-stained shirt to the man with one gold crowned tooth. “Good thing this ain’t Los Angeles,” he says, “They’re so used to pollution down there, I’ve seen ‘em last in the gas five minutes, maybe more.” It is perennial night at the ocean, perpetual winter in the tropics. The people – they always come to tell tales at my table. And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom. -END- -------------------------------------------------- September 2003 Third Place Title: "Reflections on a Japanese Screen in a Carlton Apartment" Author: Lorin Ford (nellie melba) We’re as far from it, as far out now, as centred on elsewhere as before. Straw slippers, a flute for the wind, incense, Zen art, the shrouded mountains clutter the room with gestures of emptiness. The real idea can be arranged to suit the season, like cut flowers; artificial grace argued by decor. Bound feet? That’s Chinese and passé. Today we embrace the bonsaied mind. Culture wired to form is always in order and art’s distortions are aloof from cruelty. Have some barracuda sushi in the balcony garden where wind tips the trays of gem-polished pebbles and pits them at walkers below. There’s no view of great-rooted blossoming from this height. Remote as emperors flicking specks from silken robes, we climb down the night into cars and taxis. We spit our cultivated tastes down the drain with the toothpaste, hide our dirty laundry in the clothes dryer and meditate on nothing. -END- ----------------------------------------------------- October 2003 Second Place Title: "The Camp" Author: Marty The Camp by Marty I An old man speaks Let them feel the pang of hunger. Lead them here those who now sleep in the softness of pillows and mistresses, those who day by day wear comfortable clothes, and shiny shoes, those with Rolexes, and cars and mansions. Let them take the path the children walked just this morning, bellies full of ceaseless hunger. Let them feel the grass blade cutting the skin from their legs as they run in rice paddies, forest, city streets. Let them scream under a hail of bullets. II In Manila, a child asks Grandpa, what are those? "Ah, fireworks, child. Just fireworks over at Mindanao." They are pretty. Look, is that a house burning? "Not a house, child, just straw made into a hut fit for burning. See, it burns bright and crackles!" Aren't those children, grandpa, there by the fringes? "Yes, child, and their parents too, watchers, admirers of the view." But they have tears, grandpa. "Child, it’s the smoke." They look sad, grandpa, are they sad? "Can one be sad at fireworks, my child? It’s best that you sleep now, the show will be over soon." The senator yawns, scratches his ass, and turns off the TV. III Malaria Quarantine, Refugee Camp Leaning toward the earth, a child settles down to rest under a vast sky of red dreams waiting for the flight of wings. -END- ------------------------------------------------- November 2003 First Place Title: "Sacrifice, Leaves and Whippoorwills" Author: T. E. Ballard Orange enters the green crawls to the edge of a leaf until it becomes fire, a word falling from the fingers of trees. There are always two searching in the night. It is easy to pretend what is offered is not hollow; a sound hiding in your hand. I want to say it is a wing, the touch of a feather after years of calling but it is more of an absence, color of leaves, green, to orange, to brown then dust. My father believed us holy, taught his daughters to be afraid not of men in cars or guns or rape but of silence. For days he would sit with a question, hold it over us as if it were a knife. Tonight we will not speak now here explain with your tongue graves the holes we dig to love tell me where will our bodies lie -- who will be the bird, the sheep? ----------------------------------------------------------- | ||
| Gary Blankenship
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MJ, thanks for posting the list and poems. With one possible exception, really great bits. Smiles. Gary | ||
| M
Moderator Username: mjm Post Number: 1009 Registered: 11-1998 |
June 2004 Third Place Title: "Fate" Author: Steve Williams Evergreens are taken by rough men who bury the river in thumping rafts; leather boots tread the spinning bark, the logs run the men. Tri-masts define the tall ship, they anchor taut sails as she surges through swells and spray, the sea sails the ship. We circumnavigate each day, the body seismographs the hours, ink of sweat stains the air, we cause passage of the day. * * * * Her breath is cool on the molten glass that turns on iron rod; a globe of agate brass woven from memory behind cool eyes. The bottle is wide mouthed, full bellied; glow acquiesces to green tinged clear; a golden rainbow in sunset that surrenders to broken dusk. Her hull is pushed through the bottle mouth, the common string pulls the masts upright above her bronze body, twisted strands of hair, the varnished woman of the prow. -END- ---------------- August 2004 First Place Title: "Penelope and Bird Man" Author: Laurie Byro / Ivan Waters And it is this battle of the giants that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about Heaven Freud i Afterwards, unsettled, I travel for days. The moon’s bone, thin and curved, points to a new paradise. I sweep the forest floor, cast fishing nets into the pines above our bed of needles. I fill the forest with favourite things: marmots and chattering bats. Of course, I will add turtles and rabbits. We read to each other by the glow of wolves’ eyes, a string of starfish, varnished fireflies. The earth hardens beneath our backs. I lay this bed among lady slippers and ferns. I make him discard everything but his Argyles, loop his pocket watch over the twig above. Bedtime, we thrust and sing. The watch swings back and forth, dropping minutes. In the sleep of trees owls devise a plan to furnish him with wings. Each morning he sifts piles of dead birds. He doesn’t fear death, but nor do jackdaws, I’m told. Some birds flirt with suicide, fling themselves at oak or ash: titmouse, nightjar, bullfinch, crow. My lover promises when his work is done he will return to me. I will knit Argyles and wait. Birds have given up breath for him. Among their feathers faith now thickens, and I rinse away their sticky blood. ii It’s easy to see that his purpose is love. He unstrings the beads of time in the sun. It’s easy to see that his purpose is death. He sings to an implacable fire. His mother was a lapwing, his father part kite, part nightingale. He carries her cries back to him, as if they were coins to unspend time, to unpawn summer. iii Dear Icarus, I envy you the bite of heaven as I lie cradled in the earth. I saw deer today. I glimpsed a falling star and wanted to show it to you. I will be faithful. I am a firefly captured in your hands, and the forest floor is carpeted with the dead. The stars hang from cracks in the ceiling. How can I be so cold in the summer? Dear Skylark, I saw a snake today, a brown striped viper. I found a broken shell, and blue was the blue of the sky. And periwinkles were my lover's eyes, and you are free. And I have had to let you go. And I have let you go. Dear Oedipus, There was a spider in the lighthouse, a dry web on my face. And you have gone to steal your father’s eyes, to put the moon in a wagon, the planets on the backseat of your old Fuego. She waited for you in Rapallo, she is waiting in Dunbarton. We are all waiting to see you drown. Memory spirals up the gallows hill. Dear Peregrine, don’t fall. iv At night the earth shrivelled and you whispered stories in my ear. They were not fairy tales. If I had been truly hungry for you, if jealousy had been a chain I’d fastened around your neck, then I’d have coveted every hour you spent without me. You recounted the story of a bird who started as a boy. He set off to bring back his masterpiece. You asked me to accept this. You wanted me to lie under a juniper tree and wait for your return. I am sorry you had no Ariel to carry you home in her arms. I flinch to remember the magic your father fed you. I was your lover, your mother, your sister, your whore: the wine you were looking for was locked in my pantry. I gave you as consolation two strangers telling stories among gossiping trees, together forging an epitaph, their happy ending. v on the griddle of the sun our dreams melting like butter and when you leave me to sleep my eyelids will flutter. -END- --------- October 2004 Second Place Title: A River Transformed VI: after Wang Wei's Jinzhu Ridge (4) -- Standing Before a Teacher Author: Gary Blankenship Brush to ink, ink to paper, paper given to fire, green flames released. The teacher spoke, "As empty as a barkless tree, hollow as bones that strike a bamboo drum." Masked and hooded birds, specks to the eye disturb the branches of trembling aspens. The wind divides a waterfall; water dissolves rock and grass beyond tomorrow. Why have we taken this narrow road with its unpredictable turns, quick drops and impossible climbs? When we stop, do you expect to rest? Children at play in wet red clay laugh at how their pies taste without almonds. * The literal translation on a Chinese web site: Wingceltis goldenrain shine empty bend Fresh and green ripple ripples ripples Secret enter Shang hill road Woodcutter not able know www.chinese-poems.com/ww4.html 1. The beginning is most often translated as bamboo. 2. Wingceltis is tree used to make fine paper when mixed with rice straw. They are often hollow and when old are venerated. 3. Goldenrain is a large yellow flower often called Chinese lantern. 4. The first line in Chinese (without tonal marks) is "Tan luan ying kong qu." Tan-luan is the name of a Chinese poet and Buddhist teacher. The line shows the reach of Wang's talent. ---------- December 2004 First Place Title: "Searching for Poe's Grave on Halloween, Baltimore, MD" Author: Jim Doss The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and the other begins? -- Edgar Allen Poe Not here on Fayette Street where the dull faces of commuters stare back at us in their pilgrimage to nowhere. Not on the sidewalk where a dingy robin lies like a broken doll, its missing eye peering into the next world. Not in the greasy smoke that braids the air above Hardees with animal scents, drifts into the blue haze of power plants. Not in the used hypodermic needles that gleam through a sewer grate, or crushed cans of Colt 45 rusting by the curb. Not in the red scrawl of graffiti on brick row houses where home-boys lean against the wall, peddle baggies of rock or weed to walk-ups and drive-bys. Not in the purple and black billboard advertising play by play for the Ravens’ games. “Perversity,” Poe wrote, “is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart.” In the end, he lay face-down in the gutter, delirious with fever, poisoned by madness and tainted alcohol, bribed to vote under the names of dead men for shot after shot. Now, his features carved in garish granite come alive in stone. Sunlight reflects off stained glass windows. Roots strain to topple markers in their slow crawl through soil. The path we’ve walked from his Amity Street garret traces Poe’s own footsteps as he strolled with his pubescent cousin-wife and her mother on their way to worship. We read from Tales of Mystery and Imagination into the sunset’s orange glow, wait for his spirit to rise through clay to accept our offerings— this bottle of cognac, and a black rose. ------------------------------------------------- | ||
| M
Moderator Username: mjm Post Number: 3161 Registered: 11-1998 |
June 2005 Honorable Mention Title: On Finding Trilliums Author: Kathy Paupore She walks the woods along the road, the air is cold, rain comes and goes. There at the base of the pine, a glimpse. The wait has been short or long, depends on your perception of time and its demands. That tease of white could be a scrap of birch bark, discarded paper, a patch of snow. Other ephemerals have come and gone, most too quickly, unless you watch for their bloom. Maybe these two were here yesterday, but she walked this same path, saw no signs. Perhaps the leaves were close on the ground, tiny buds still green. Today they must be taller, three leaves open, white petals curved back to drink rain. ----------- July 2005 Poem of the Year -- Second Place Title: “Penelope and the Birdman” Author: Laurie Byro / Ivan Waters (See August 2004) ------------- | ||
| Gary Blankenship
Advanced Member Username: garyb Post Number: 4124 Registered: 07-2001 |
Some names there I truly miss. Any way to invite them back? Smiles. Gar Drop in read the new MindFire, 2005's first Go in through http://www.mindfirerenew.com/ to get to the issue in a click or two. | ||
| marty
Advanced Member Username: marty Post Number: 560 Registered: 10-2003 |
MJM, Now those are great works, all of them, with one possible exception....To see the breadth and depth of the subjects, and the way our members have composed the poems is simply a joy to read. An honor to be among wilders. | ||
| Laurie Byro
Advanced Member Username: lauriette Post Number: 1185 Registered: 11-2003 |
I took first place for Melic (now defunct in October 2001?) and an HM for them that year as well. I think it should be up there as Wild still exists and it was only because of the bruhaha that started in there that made Julius lead me to a kinder more gentle board. Lb | ||
| steve
Moderator Username: twobyfour Post Number: 118 Registered: 05-2005 |
hi laurie well we are glad to see you made it here, but even M and I have ibpc winners from other boards that are not on this page. we really want to limit this list to the poems that were sent to ibpc by wild and only wild. ok? s | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 9317 Registered: 11-1998 |
November 2006 Second Place Title: The Murderer Next Door Author: Steve Williams 1. In my dark infancy are rooms of infra-red, blankets of sound-proofing that hide an infant’s cry. Inside asbestos skin, I hear blood pulse through my temples like heated air through stainless ductwork, the whir of advancing film inside my camera skull. I dig blood-rusted nails into my ear canal, scrape the grit of scabs, try to free myself from the deep noise--like ants in their burrows. 2. I followed him to Idaho, found another job cutting hair. He drove me out into the wilderness, one of the places at the ends of gravel, lays me on the hood of the car. Afterwards, all I remembered was the river hiss, the rush of blood between wooded banks. It was a long walk back. 3. It doesn’t take this one long before a lean of the shoulder into my breast, the shift of an elbow grazes my crotch. They all think they can hide under the cape as I snip away at their hair. Close below his very clean ear (some ears are like old snot rags), I concentrate on the slight movement of the artery, a tube of spit, sausage of sewage, exhaust fumes trapped in a wine bottle, tornado of voices screaming to get out. I want to take these scissors, and dig out the sound, the ear wax, break it free of the darkroom, expose the negative, become the photograph. He leaves me a twenty dollar tip. ----------------- | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 25613 Registered: 11-1998 |
March 2007 Honorable Mention Title: Caisa Thorbjornsdotter Author: Jana Bouma I've known the small red farmhouse, the dear blue curtains and the white china, the husband behind the oxen on the rocky hillside, the patch of oats beside the tall pines. I've known the forest alive with skogsra and wight, trolls and huldre-folk, the hymns in the small church. I've known the wash day and the birthing day, the son gone off to the city, the iron crosses, each with its name, beside the small mounds. I've known the long journey, sick with fever, the crowded passage, the strange new city, the setting out by lake and river and wagon, arriving at this place that stretches on forever, a land of nothing, no tomte or myling to murmur in the night, no neighbor, no fencepost. This land did not turn easy to the plow, but I planted myself here among the tall grasses. The grasses' deep roots, they welcomed me. skogsra, wight, trolls, huldre-folk, tomte, myling: creatures in Scandinavian folklore Thorbjornsdotter: daughter of Thorbjorn __________________________________________________ June 2007 First Place Title: Bad Weather Author: Dale McLain You can grow accustomed to storms. Every night they shake our sheetrock, set the bricks trembling. Mortar remembers it is only sand. Our jaunty roof begs to be doffed. And I huddle within my frame with dread and an awful wish that the past proves its redundancies, that miles away the twister will drop- not here, not now when I have just remembered my own name. When the windows bow like Galileo's glass I begin to pray to deities yet unnamed, beseech the clever stars that hide behind the churning ceiling. I confess that peace is not my plea. Instead I ask for more colors and a measure of strength to face the wind. The red oak fusses at my window, whines and scratches to come in. But it holds, this vine-covered house, stands on its wide flat bottom, a prairie boat anchored fast in hard white clay and history. Within I slip off my shoes. Tonight is not the night that I will walk on broken glass and wear the unmistakable face of disbelief. The thunder's growl begins to lose step with the lightning. In the attic rafters sigh and creak like scrawny old men. I lay my head on the last damp cloud where dreams of whirlwinds and flying shingles wait. I sleep like a town wiped off the map. _________________________________________________ August 2007 First Place Title: After Howl III -- Rockin' the Ages Author: Gary Blankenship who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels --Allen Ginsberg, Howl east of boise they find a cultist who prepared kool-aid for a jim jones when sister Sylvia saw the Virgin Mary in the pond behind the hen house no one paid any attention to her south of soshone they locate a survivalist who sells cranberries in a fruit stand on highway 93 when mama saw Mother Mary in grandpa's fried egg, they turned the kitchen into a shrine ketchum is all weed dealers who tithe to a clapboard church in mountain home Uncle John is still in the attic they leave orofino where every man woman child stray goat is his her its own prophet Christ walked across Lake Coeur d'Alene the day of the parade in honor of President Reagan and no one noticed in the lewiston they come across the holy slots sacred decks hallowed bones mammon's offering to the state the picture of the Garden behind Grandma's bed only cost her $125 in 1973 in soda springs they hit upon a two dollar gal who nightly prays to baby jesus at least twice an hour in an alley behind the suds and pack when the tent revival came to town everyone was there, two members of the cheer squad were visiting relatives the next fall the idaho falls temple is being repainted in a new shade of temple white I dream my guardian angel is on strike the buddhist gate is locked on cable Italian suits beg moloch sings when the roll is called up yonder ******* Honorable Mention Title: immeasurable Author: Dale McLain In the year that caught me in its rusty snare, cornered me, rolled me like a bum, I grew an inch. Impossible, you might say. Middle-aged ladies do not grow taller, only wider, sadder, greyer. But it's the truth. I felt every millimeter in my bones. The October sky was closer than it had ever been. From my new perspective I could see things that I'd forgotten. A footstep was a mile. Each heartbeat claimed an hour. So odd, that I was tighter bound than a spool of coarse thread, but felt as if my arms were feathered things unfurled against a coastal wind. In the year when I was laid open by a silvery blade, cut from scalp to toe, I was contained within folded petals a blossom, cotton white and ready for spring's kiss. I bled with joy, a narrow river that went before me as a thin rouged trail I knew was mine. I learned to live unforgiven, came to own a sorrow as deep as a December night and a gladness that danced like stars upon the sea. Things begin so slyly, steal upon us like a summer twilight. I stand altered, a tower dedicated to the next breath drawn. Nothing fits me anymore. _________________________________________________ October 2007 Honorable Mention Title: Ungodly Apartment Building Author: Teresa White I wait on the stoop of a Sunday morning and never once seen nobody slicked up like Uncle Jake used to be or any lady all fancy with a hat. Why I couldn't count one cherry nor bird to eat it just these woolies come down over their prissy pink ears and my guess is not a one was headed up to the Baptists nor the Catholics neither. Lil' Tim had a whistle and sometimes he'd join me and give 'er a blow when the rouged-up frillies from Apartment 2-B come draggin' out 'bout ten. Mama wouldn't say but I knew they weren't telling nursery rhymes to rich Mr. Black. That Tim, even he didn't believe in Jesus so at night 'fore I settled right fine in bed, I prayed hard that those fancy ladies. _________________________________________________ November 2007 Third Place Title: The Gravity of it Beautiful Author: Melanie G. Firth Silence the length of your sleeve. Pause ripens everywhere. Silence, as in 'dead silence', is a lie. Under your collar is a heart-to-heart, think conversations of the skin, the only talk whispered just there. And then stifled, choked, the lover's spit razed to leave you unloved. I can almost taste. that. clambering. pause. as it hastens to shout in palms you now hide. moist (the gravity of it...) escapes this new design. Flung loose like an epitaph alight in trees, speaks '... _________________________________________________ . | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 28580 Registered: 11-1998 |
. January 2008 Honorable Mention Title: Redcap Author: Sarah J. Sloat Tarry, stray, and you fall into his lap: a pillory and bellylaugh -- for that is the plunge of strumpets. Down the hatch lie rooms strewn with wool, stockings and children's shoes, lined with moss and stumpage. No surprise to hear the village hiss, complicitous. Gossips consider it no mystery how girls go down, kindling appetite, when the wolf asks what you have under your apron, little mistress, and you reply -- wine and tarts, old beast, a ruse, a rosebud. --------------------------------------------- March 2008 Honorable Mention Title: The Season of Science Author: M. E. Silverman i. How to Explain What It is All About Bees bothered by absence, violin-hunger for pollen to fill their days, fields full of van Gogh, golden glows and sun fire of the katsura, the quick spread of spice over lawns, wild like the William Tell Overture— wait. Hear me out: this is suppose to be about blooms and the season of amore. More what? No, I meant— here, let me try to explain. But she is dressing, and it is difficult to express postulates and proposals to pearls and powders, to a bra and blouse, to the berry pit of her tongue. Look: the cold of night shadows the countryside, bees far from the hive will cease their search— what? Listen. I didn’t mention drones, dear. No, I didn’t know they only had one purpose. I think we’re getting off track here— no one knows why the life expectancy of drones is 90 days. Oh, that’s rhetorical. Alright, forget the fucking bees! Let me try again: a field with interaction has a magnetic moment— that’s the science of electrons. From a distance, an entity feels the force of another— that’s the science for particles. These moments do not need to be temporary; we can be more than a flyleaf on a book of nameless poems, more than motel meetings and phone calls that sound like a lute. Do you understand? The season of science is like everything that moves, and sooner or later, will change, changes, changed. ii. Ode to Jasmine The horizon’s hem retreats, and a little light splits between the curtains. The night jasmines the room. Between the double beds, I left a bottle of cheap Chilean Merlot, thick bread sticks still in the box, cold, and an unopened gift in blue wrap. The radio crackles between stations, half-plays static and the heavy notes of Schubert, slow and haunting— you heard it if you know such seasons. I lean in to swing shut the door and pause to remind me of this ode and the comma I changed to a perfect period. -------------------------------------- April 2008 Poem of the Year -- First Place Title: “bad weather” Author: Dale McLain (See June 2007) ---------------------------------------------- May 2008 Honorable Mention Title: fountain Author: Douglas Hill I recall the spiral down the spit-fountain in my father's dental chamber: I leaned too long over the sucking shiny throat, stalled, steeling against my return to his adept hands wielding instruments that would drill precisely into my fault. I lay back dry mouthed on that baroque black barbershop chair, as if for a trim, scissors on the sides; resigned to the rest, longing for a sip of water, some respite. He turned secretively as he would in the kitchen to decant a tumbler of scotch. The pestle riffed a hard hissing mantra: he urged it against the mortar, mixing the mystic silver-mercury amalgam; then into me flooded the moment of bonding more intimate than thirst: his soft warm fingers in my mouth. ---------------------------------- July 2008 First Place Title: Feast of Disappointments Author: Linda Cable I have come to the potatoes, paring them down swiftly, chanting your sins to the sink until I hold another offering, haphazard orbs the color of old eggs and I choke on the smell of mud. A room away you snore, clutching at visions, dreaming of butter, gravy and youth. I have seen your belly rise, fall, still aching for round things; sweet breast of melon, pickled cucumbers biting your sun broken lips, the rain taste of green grapes; ever a man of appetites. In the fields, you confessed, pulled up my skirt with no concern for the fallow years. Now we are about potatoes; the ticktock of consuming roots in silence, ignoring the pull of the scythe. During those blind years we knew nothing of wasted nights, two beds, pressed against separate walls. I boil Canaan with turnips, served up on wedding plates. ******** Honorable Mention Title: Aftertaste Author: Brenda Morisse She sways to this half-tone day, staggers like smoke on a tight rope of discontent. The depth of forever passes for lilies in this muckheap. She has no head for the world and its free-for-all needlework of bill collectors and spiteful windows. The floor is cluttered with bottle caps and cans, so she drapes the sofa on the ceiling and hovers cross-legged and side-by-side with the overhead. If you ask me, she isn't a saint although she's very photogenic. Whoever heard of a pin-up saint hawking pilsner? Her mother nagged her to marry rich, but her heart was never a cash register. It's always been the beer: sweetish, malty Munich and the drier, hoppy Franconian. Her shoebox is filled with bits of broken jewelry: rhinestones and paste, pot metal and silver. Can openers. Hardware softened by careless spools of wires, head pins, eye pins, disheveled bracelets, wrong-way earrings. Orphans in this box have a way of tugging at heart strings. The ring is broken in. Remember when they were head over heels, before life warped the metal, and marriage became too hard to wear? The sum of her memories is tied in knots. I heard she was run out of town, a bartender with stigmata. It's not hygienic. Our St. Pauli call girl resists know-it-all-gravity and the attraction it mandates, contradicts spiked heels, prods her to wear a bra. Pompous gravity, bombastic gravity, she says. I will walk on water, I will stop time. I levitate. Get over yourself! She is younger than her adult children. She prefers polka dot baring midriff tops. Mardi Gras without Lent. --------------------------------- September 2008 First Place Title: St. Louis Jim Author: Henry Shifrin He picks his nose, index finger deep in the nostril, face turned to the window. Passengers file by, stutter-step to stare at the split-seam back of his gray suit jacket -- a camel's back spreads its feather-duster hairs to wave in the heavy breathing of the air conditioning. His reflection a map in the glass. The creases in the cheek highway east and west. Soot gives them a macadam glow; maybe it's the settled ash of a cigarette. The rolling paper in his chest pocket. The smell in the fibers of his jacket and pants. On his bottom lip, a black spot where the nicotine dies the way a dinosaur drops off its carcass (a font the oil companies will one day drill). His finger pops out -- it's a champagne-bottle cork--no, it's a finger, dark from worming in the space between seats. A momentary smile. The sheen of a quarter. He licks off the bubblegum. It's a fruity flavor. He sticks a hand in his back pocket. Compares the taste to that of threads and Froot-Loop bits. He tongues his fingertips. The sweetness. Then the salty taste. The train stops, opens doors. He stands, re-buttons his jacket. Curls his fingers for another view. Hitches up his beltless pants, the waist a wrist too wide. Then leaps through the closing doors. His pants fall when he lands. The sight of half his butt, the underwear torn to flap away from the right cheek. His hands are two squirrels. They grip at the air. Timidly jot down the trunk of his leg. Stammer for a belt loop--or no, they want to survey the sidewalk. Yes they pull up the pants. Up over the rear, a sidecar rounds a hill, he swaggers the drumbeat of a sidewalk musician. ************** Second Place Title: Saturday Author: S. Thomas Summers Sunlight contents itself with treetops. Stones shawl themselves with shade: The boy across the street has begun his chores: folding night's remnants--draped over the porch light, the mailbox-- laying each on a bathroom shelf above cotton sheets, lavender towels. His baseball mitt has been crucified, nailed to a front yard elm that dangles a broken swing. His father has hidden the evidence, buried a hammer in the sandbox where ants have begun to carve their tunnels. There's work to be done. -------------------------------------------------- October 2008 Honorable Mention Title: Imagination of the Deflated Balloon Author: Henry Shifrin The balloon lies marooned beside a stain of a foot on an empty section of rug. Smells of burned rubber where its tip kissed a match. It had been so lonely and the breeze, so gentle. The wind's hand lifted gracefully toward the flame, warm but too warm. The balloon leaves the moment to dream: it fills with air, rises into the clouds. Grounded fog depresses all it covers, but moving through clouds has a holy chill. The balloon populates the sky with round bodies, remembers the static lightning two bodies can rub into being -- the shock that erases the space between them. Realizes movement isn't as necessary as thought, and so it inflates a friend it knew when they clung to the same lamp post, over the happy-birthday sign and compared the size of their shadows. This balloon always darkened the ground more than others. At least it dreamed it that way. _________________________________________________ | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 34007 Registered: 11-1998 |
. April 2009 Honorable Mention Title: Baseball Season Author: Andrew Dufresne A New York Times is the day rolled under an arm as it begins to rain. The player catches a baseball to win the game, celebrates a death. It's all over. She loves you for who you are. You don't know it yet but you are loved by everyone for dying. There's no other reason. The story of your life is above the fold. Column four, next to a coffee stain. The baseball rises, rises, into the thin air. Everyone holds, holds, their breath. It begins. You and her are through. You take a slow pull on a cigarette and stare for hours at the sun, denying. It's baseball season. --------------- May 2009 Honorable Mention Title: Her obituary picture will look nothing like her Author: Alex Stolis the children will say it’s because she likes to talk about hearts, their shape and texture, how they are simple but never quite within reach. Her hands are unsettling, she is aware of her mouth, aware that everyone expects sadness and when the clock strikes the hour it brings with it the sound of a train, the feeling of dust and the sweet taste of his sweat. She was eighteen, refused to be contained, he knew how even a thin veneer of pride could shatter a man in two; being lost together didn’t feel out of place. Sometimes, when he was sound asleep she would watch him breathe, imagine they were on an ocean liner traveling to Europe, illicit lovers running away from long-established conventions, breaking their own rules because they could. There were gravel roads and cotton dresses, long-neck beers and no need for second chances and on clear summer days she swore she could see all the time in the world glisten in the corner of his eye. ----------- July 2009 Honorable Mention Title: Stephanie Author: Kathleen Vibbert Stephanie came to live with us from Yugoslavia. She had small shoulders, a nervous laugh, and the half-moons of her fingernails were egg white. She described her late mother as a winter tree, her father’s senility between King and drifter. Quiet. When I first heard her voice I asked what she aspired to. A chef, she replied. Olives. The sleep of marinade. Cutting limes, selecting blackberries as if they were a song, dropping chocolate centers onto sheets of cut rite. She brings sweet weather and rest. Elegance, for the way she carries the spice trays to the table, breathing deeply as the bread rises, weary toward evening near an open window. ---------- August 2009 Honorable Mention Title: my name is river Author: Derek Richards carlos says my face resembles a frenzy of boiling rivers. this is the only compliment my face has ever received. every morning since i was five i’ve begged the mirror to lie. mirrors are the most honest people i know. carlos describes girls. how they taste like stale popcorn, feel like an old couch, how they invite through eyes, stamp out through scorn. i’ll get you a girl, someday, he promises, blind, drunk or crazy. every morning since i was five i remember daddy, acid and sirens. my cheekbones were soft, people all around me, screaming stay calm, stay calm. carlos calls me River. it’s one of the kindest things anyone has ever said. someday i’m going to get married, father beautiful children, drunk, blind or crazy. the mirror will lie, the itch behind my eyes will fade and the frenzy of rivers will blend into a calming of sea. dear daddy, i’ll write, my name is river, i am your son. ******* Honorable Mention Title: true romance in black and white Author: Alex Stolis on the charcoal gray corner of franklin and chicago a sepia woman is alone, maybe waiting for a bus, maybe lonely, afraid, needing protection; maybe on the make with a razor sharp attitude ready to slice you open the instant you utter a sound. she brings a cigarette to her lips, hesitates for a moment and once you crawl inside that moment you are unsure, words lodge in your throat, your eyes drawn to the crease in her skirt, the curve of her hips as she shifts her weight, moves her left hand to light the cigarette. there is a spark and a flame and you catch a brief flash of truth or is it a well concealed lie. she deliberately closes her eyes and you count onethousandone, onethousandtwo, when they open she exhales. you want the smoke to cut through you, want to know her name, where she was born, you want to take her home, want to walk away and find another drink in another city on another corner and though you don’t believe in god you pray for primary colors and rain to break the silence. she takes a final drag; in the still air you catch your breath and wish for her kiss to bleed you dry until all that’s left are ragged shreds of apathy drenched in green, blue and red. ------- September 2009 Third Place Title: Illegal #2 Author: Sergio Ortiz She makes it difficult to ignore the wet clothes on a man’s back as he wanders into la migra’s office for a 24-hour stay, or a free jet ride home. She’s too alarmed to remember the two daughters left behind. Umbrellas keep her in the shade while officers bring tamarind flavored snowballs to douse her dehydration. They wick the sweat off her breast, keep her armpits from staining, stinking the robe. Tomorrow she’ll rattle all this away like cows shake off flies. _________________________________________________ | ||
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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 36145 Registered: 11-1998 |
. January 2010 Honorable Mention Title: Wig Author: Michael Harty She lay dead-white and perfect blanketed in paint and lilies. Incense died around our ankles. The hair, stiff with spray, too quiet to be her own. Never mind the little priest, what could he know of her falls and rises, of dime dances and lucky breaks, mink-wrapped evenings in Columbus Circle, New Year’s canapes on the Queen Mary. The shining lies of tuxedoed men, the dead faithlessness of diamonds. High life in the Loop, low life a block from Venice Beach. How to put twelve years of dents in the same Cadillac. How one enunciates while holding one’s fourth manhattan of the afternoon. Yes, it was fate or serendipity when the late-arriving nephew staggered into the wreath from the Library Guild, knocking it into the coffin, which tipped the wig over her eyes and smeared her lipstick for the last time. Now that was more like it. Finally we could say goodbye. ---------- February 2010 Second Place Title: A Question of Nakedness Author: Melanie Firth fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. - Anais Nin Nips, lips and a chasm of whiteness. A mark they call ‘birth’. Imperfection that wants to love itself. All that stand-alone. The great crowding physicality. How flesh recalls action, but scars over the cost. The questions flesh fold on, give rise to. Do I turn you on? Turn on you? Hurt when I press here. Here? The thigh’s mole, will it answer to melanoma, to Melanie? How SP30+ became a process of affection, cotton sucking on a figurative field of follicles and sweat. The occasional horror of a deep metaphorical wound or otherwise and the smug nature of paper cuts. Beauty versus scars. Natural regeneration v.s. stocking-up on anti-aging products. All the recesses I fear and my inability to say ‘hole’ around your arousal. Pinkness and rawness (that relationship). The take-it-in-your-stride concept of disposal, birth and of f—ing. The body’s gumption. How it breaks on time, indulgence and self-harm. The egging-on of the virile seed. Regret for the wounded animal who leaves me bloodless, but fools me into power. The lack of cushioning on shoulder blade, knee and elbow fixtures. The exasperation of a slow scab and the fruitless study of palms. The distrustfulness of wrists. How I cannot really slander or comprehend my nakedness at all. ------------- March 2010 Third Place Title: Everything will be permitted, nothing will be desired Author: Laura Ring We abandoned our bodies not long after the millennium. Even the memory was hateful at first — wet, crabwise things, animalcules in a giant jizz wad rushing to fertilize the Great Mother. Absurd lips, genitals, rounded skulls like the dumb heads of sperm. Reproduction a horror of chance, like reaching blind into a grab bag for gametes. We had cures for everything: cancer, heart disease. We lived too long, witnessed the recalculation of risk. Watched the ordinary – cotton, moonlight — turn deadly. There were so many ways to die. In time our absent bodies grew benign, the way vanished things become lovable. Laudanum. Castor oil. We shake our heads at the big-head bipeds that wander our history like hi-wheels and wagons; tote their leaks and swellings in the hapless past. A mere century makes of our bodies a Golden Age. We doubt the measure of our bloodless geometry, press the old timers for stories of flesh: They say our fingers made trails in the water; and the pizza cheese burned our mouths. They say sometimes our bare legs would stick to the back seats of cars. ***** Honorable Mention Title: Lot Author: Richard Moorhead I. Bible Story Someone’s wife, no - husband, dreaming of a soup to dip the spouse in. The years taste like her or cream of artichoke with a little lick of sin. II. Readied for Sale How casually you sell my mistakes to recipients of saleable complaints, tie an off-white luggage tag to my big toe, ready me for auction. I despise that but I love the thickness of the paper and the tag’s hole protector - a sticker like a polo mint. I love its old fashionedness. III. That’s your lot It’s not what you have, but the end of what you have. It is not who you are, but the end of who you are. I am reluctant to accept it, like the moment when you move house. Close the last door on an emptied room, register disgust and marvel at the dust surrounding where the frames of pictures lingered with indifference. You should move, but then you’d start to build your lot again. ------------ April 2010 Third Place Title: Caring for Your Gimp Author: Henry Shifrin Fold your Gimp along his creases. The hemline created by his smiles. He can beam, an ornament of sorts, in front of a window for hours. The passersby may not be happy. See the pale cheek. But no lip stays straight when it confronts such an endless smile. As you fold him, powder the skin a gentle lavender. Make sure to clean away any chance for mildew or mold, things that ruin a complexion and often cause a terrible stench. Brush the hairs, all the hairs, even those on his back, straight. Leave the folded man on a chair beside the door. He will be ready for a car ride, a flicker of television, a kiss on the ear. And later you can unfold him and scrub the skin stretched across his belly to shine like a just-washed sedan. In the evening, if you have folded him into a small square, place him snug among mothballs, where nothing will bite or nick his skin. ------------ . |
