IBPC Winning Poems, 2008, Congratulations Poets! Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Winning Poems for January 2008
Judge Fleda Brown
Congratulations!

First Place

The Bottle Tree
by Allen M. Weber
Desert Moon Review

I was so proud, Mama, to get that robe, to help
fashion a cross with Hale County's finest men.
They let me have two swigs of shine and load up
Papa's shotgun.

That boy was kneeling on the hard-swept floor
below a char-drawn likeness of Jesus.
In a rightful fury, his ma'am fought like three
big men; her sorrow bit like a sour bile
into the roof of my mouth.

We dragged him to their bottle tree, and Mama,
those bottles made a sucking sound and poured out
colored moonlight at our feet. We staggered about
grinning like fear

as someone shot the barking dog, cackled when another
tore down the damp unmentionables that fluttered
on a single taut line.

As the rope was drawn around a limb, too near
a hollowed gourd with purple martin eggs,
I raised my hood to throw up supper on my boots,
then helped to paint a home with kerosene
and fire.

Since then my children raised up children, who play
with brown-skinned ones; and those who'd force it otherwise
are mostly hair and bones.

But southernmost branches caught the flames that night;
their splintered wounds still bleed. The heat-shocked
glass still takes my breath, to howl for reckoning. So

the animals keep wary: deer won't rut, dogs won't
lift to pee; and until I too go on to Hell,
the martins may never come again.

A child's experience, in the child's voice, of being allowed to join in a lynching--the subject could easily turn cliched, but this poem manages to keep a hard light on the memory--the sour bile, the bottles in the tree. The scene comes vividly alive. The martin's nest, full of eggs, just above the head of the child throwing up witnessing the horror--is a brilliant focus for the poem. It's the martin's nest and the skillful control of rhythm that charms me, here. --Fleda Brown



Second Place

Goose Step
by Lois P. Jones
Pen Shells

The Goose-Step
. . . is one of the most horrible sights in the world,
far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. --George Orwell

He loves to goose-step in her parking lot,
fluorescent light casting the stage
for Dachau. He grins in his brown
skinned suit, marvels at the way the Germans
treat him like a countryman. Loves the coarse
consonants of their commands, the wild sex
with the German girl he'd had on the road to Spain.

He wanders through Jewish graveyards to feel
the faded dates of the tombs. A pastime,
in the way that stepping is his pleasure
in the darkness. He loves the swastika,
tells her about its ancient origins, the dotted quadrants
of the Hindus, the Neolithic symbols 10,000 years
before Christ. "A tradition" that dates to the 17th century,
the Prussian army stepping on the faces of the enemy.

She finds him aesthetic, like the tall leather
boots of the Reichswehr. Tries to think
about his love of flamenco, the dark hollows
of his song unbedding a command. She knows
to pass under him is the terror
she needs. He knows to pass over her

like another graveyard. She prays the neighbors
are not looking. Begs him to stop but he smirks,
lifts his legs higher and higher. A sign of unity
like the men who stepped around Lenin's tomb.
It says that man can withstand all orders
for love, no matter how painful, how ludicrous.

A tightly controlled, dense poem that in its language evokes the goose-step itself. I like the way this poem moves from the image of marching (under the fluorescent light, scarier still!) to all the ramifications of the love affair, from flamenco dancing, to wild sex, to the study of gravestones--all at the emotional pitch that the word Nazi implies. "She finds him aesthetic" says everything we need to know about their relationship, and about what can drive people into inhuman behavior. --Felda Brown



Third Place

The Cardiologist Has a Word with Us
by Yolanda Calderon-Horn
The Town

Cold fingers prowl my spine
even though no one I know is
touching me: nothing doctors
can do. Not a thing. I brush

fingers on one sister's elbow,
greet my son's shoulder with mine.
Another sister clings to mami's hand.
My husband embraces me, lets go;

embraces, lets go. I call the rest
of my siblings in Chicago. I just
say it. I leave the hospital knowing
little about what comes next and too

much of what came before. Days after,
I'm a Radio Flyer covered in snow.
The body and mind lug its brood.
When I walk by young gals at the office,

endlessly pigging up their darling lives,
or the elderly neighbor shifting dust
to the street, I want to grab normalcy
by the collar, ask: why did you dump us?

I think of mami who has the right
or should raise her voice to suit,
and wonder if the phantom of the opera
will have untrained notes trapped

in my stomach. I go to bed trying
to sort fear from anger, resignation
from gratefulness, faith from hope.
I awaken tangled with pipes of the smoke.

I want to wish papi a feliz ano nuevo
the moment I walk through his door-
but the unpredictability of his failing
heart gobbles happy out of terms.

I stand by the fireplace hoping
the ice-storm will melt. Minutes later,
the hearth inhales moisture out of words:
my tongue is heavy like cooled clay.

I like the way this poem slips up on the sorrow, embedding it in the details before we understand its source. The Radio Flyer, the neighbor shifting dust/ to the street, the coworkers "pigging up their darling lives"--the images skillfully keep us one step away from the actual event, the one that matters. The poem stands in its length and its quatrains as testament to Emily Dickinson's poem that begins, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes." I am particularly fond of "The Cardiologist..."s last two lines, the way the poem ends with "cooled clay." --Felda Brown



Honorable Mentions

Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!
by Guy Kettelhack
Desert Moon Review

Let it go? Vapid palliation! --
which at best can soothe one
into thinking there's a truth quite
simply to be had, if only we'd get
calm enough. Stuff it: here is
what I know today. I've got a cold
I'm almost happy won't too quickly
go away: I've just ingested
chicken broth with matzoh balls --
Balducci's tasty anti-flu soup (lower
east side wannabe) – and I've been
on a spree of fantasizing lightly:
watching Turner Classic Movies
circa 1933: and it's as if a Cupid
had alighted on my knee, to entertain
me with this possibility: that
someone full of glow whom I have
just begun to know might turn
into a Huck, or Jim -- I do so very
much like him. It's quite a mix, this
pile of pick-up sticks that one
calls one's perceptions: full of
chicken soup deceptions: but
nothing's here for seeing that we
haven't dreamed up into being: so
allow me Jim, or Huck, and I will
be the other shmuck, and it will
half be daring, half be luck,
if we, out on our raft, get into --
something -- ineluctable.


Red Cap
by Sarah J. Sloat
Wild Poetry Forum

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.

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hello all,

Just a quick note to say that the June results have finally been announced. Since I'm traveling, I've very SLOW connection speed so will post those results later this weekend when I get back to my home turf.

Stay tuned!
~Cleo

UPDATED, 03 August 2008

Winning Poems for June 2008
Judge Patricia Smith
Congratulations!

First Place

The Length of Never
by dublinsteve
SplashHall Poetry


How did the meadowlarks in Wichita
remain invisible for over two years?
Virgil showed up in the fourth grade
with five baby rabbits crammed into
a tan briefcase. Two died before lunch
recess, one squashed at playground's
edge when it took a wrong turn--Kevin
stepped on it--and two dissolved into
the wheat field from which they were
plucked in the first place. Nature seemed
bountiful that May. The walk home tripled
in length with another relentless search
for a yellow breast with the black V.
Disappointment quadrupled by suppertime.
We toured a grain elevator the next day.
I watched the wheat-dotted blacktop
fill with sparrows as my voice spilled
a current of nevers on the man with
the face like a dry riverbed. His voice
was smoke and gravel, "Never means
something will not happen forever.
You should not say that."

Out of the sun dropped a place named
Vietnam, then we moved to Ohio,
land of cardinals. Red spots dotted
the trees and bushes. Shrewd crows
attacked row after row of my uncle's corn.
Straw men were useless. Killdeers faked
broken wings, lured us into hope
and away from their nests. Groundhogs
burrowed under tillable soil, escaping
from one hole as we dug at another. Still,
the sparrows were everywhere. We shot
them with BB guns, for a man hidden
underneath a John Deere cap. He hated
hordes, demanded that we line bodies up
for the count. As dust and slivers of husks
floated on his coffee he paid us for the
deaths, talked about the war and how
we would never lose. My voice was oak
and mint. "Never means something
will not happen forever. You should
not say that."

I was in Colorado recently and saw one,
a meadowlark. I know now of intentions
and accidents, of dark skies and unstable
ground, of red spots and guns, of dropped
grain that doesn't matter, of wars and when
to dump coffee. I know now that never
is a million sparrows later.

The first two lines of this riveting slice of narrative set up a dark and engaging mystery--and each tight stanza is like an unfurling slice of cinema--mesmerizing and crammed with color and heat. I loved the tale, and I loved the vivid search for an answer to the riddle. --Patricia Smith


Second Place

A Fall from Grace
by S. Thomas Summers
Desert Moon Review


Grandpa scales the fish before
he removes its head or slices
a thin line up its belly, spilling

blood and water. He lodges
his thumb deep in its throat,
between gills -- clenches

his fist around the skull.
Jagged tool, a spoon with teeth,
tears shimmer from flesh:

a rainbow ripped from the soft
air that lingers after morning storms.
The tail curls toward the sun. Lidless

eyes, still moist, leak disbelief.
This is death. Gills flare like butterflies
fanning purple wings. I ask

if it hurts. Grandpa says
Little bit, just a little bit.

Stark, concise and deliciously image-driven, this minute gem is lush and unerringly focused. The underlying tale grows larger and more complex with each reading--and with each reading, this poem feels like a gift on the open air. --Patricia Smith



Third Place

Outwitting Your Angels
by Dave Mehler
The Critical Poet.com


Use every animal ferocity be fierce as fire lovely fire
they are made of and as willful use blood cunning
fear shrewdly corporeal rightly and against them.
They will not expect it either hate or applaud you.
You require oxygen fuel sheltering sleep, you change in time--
alien, they do not--but twinned to you nonetheless.

Use that. Be the compact wolverine squat underestimated
harried by hunter pursued across tundra over rises
who turns and charges knock him off his high loud horse
the snowmobile his white wings over cloud froze high
even before he can pull rifle from sheath stare him down unscratched
unbitten till he will not no cannot shoot you even in war
as you turn away make him admire you ashamed of himself.

Be a virus relentless soulless machinelike repetitive
producing like kind impervious fruitful godlike and love strange
like that--no antibody will withstand no death touch you for long.

Certain light heat lightning hot white quick or black black black
he will shapeshift he you the muddy cornered pooch pathetic
you a mutt pup pissing down your leg neck up back down saying here take it

always outnumbered outgunned before you were born unable
unchosen without gift of speech a vague dream a bark a whimper
only canine teeth no power of thought really no imagination
as it should be truly understood they understand yet know
in the Presence even they must cover their faces
with haughty wings still they superhuman cry they other
laugh hear music you must be deaf to you uncomprehending

sniff the air circular back leg scratch at an itch unreachable
only skin deep. But think remember did He identify with
did He die for them? He outwitted he became the wedge
between you kyrie kyrie to your angel eleison you must look weak

must but the secret is weak is the weapon they in hoary anger
mirror horrible harbinge dark ancient awe guests, unwished for,
unanimal yes the doorway you put off opening the facade
hot cool cool hot layered the dog dressed up like death
but you couldn't know didn't imagine death and everything
you lost every buried bone come back to greet you.

The relentless meter, the urgency, the unyielding pulse of this poem was immediately addictive. I was hooked on its inevitability, the way it hurtled toward an ending that left me me short of breath. --Patricia Smith



Honorable Mentions


Spirit Catcher
by Catherine Rogers
Poets.org


What do you do when it's full?
I ask the proprietor. She frowns.
She obviously thinks
I'm not serious.

Most people don't have that many
evil spirits visiting their house.

The glass orb winks and twirls
on its thread. How many
are in there now?

They don't come here.

Not to this shop. Too many
spirit catchers hung in the window,
too much lucky incense adrift
in the still air. Runes and stones.
I take up an amethyst, sure to protect
against drunkenness, a gift
for the dissolute.

But what if--? She's doing
the books.

What if they foment
a demon revolution?
What if the last one in
is a rotten egg? What if
the shell cracks and leaks
its malice all over the parlor?

If we don't know
how many angels can boogaloo
on the head of a pin,
how can we number the legions
of lust and envy that can cram
themselves into this delicate sphere?

Too risky, thanks. I step
into sunlight. I'll just
have to handle my sins
one at a time.

One of those things that make you go "Ummmm....," a delightful, and slightly sinister, answer to a question we all wish we'd asked. --Patricia Smith


Flood
by Richard Evans
MoonTown Cafe


I thought if I waited,
if I left wine, small purple flowers
a polished coin, if I made secret prayers
and with rituals
blessed the dirt that would cake
your boots when you came,
then you would come.

I thought if I wept,
if I fucked with the thought
of your face masking the face of the one
who has taken your place
and made of my bones
a terrible shrine
then you would come home.

And I thought if I drove
my children away, and drove
myself mad, and cut through my palm
and bewitched the windows of your friends
with my watching -
or if I stayed numb, silent
and orderly, beached
and counting the sum of your acts
with white and black pebbles, one by one -
then you would come home.

Eight stars out
and the station is calling.
Not much to eat, the clocktower is gone.
And where the rivermouth was
now there's a market -
the people seem surprised
when it floods.

The building tension, marked by a growing and ill-fated desperation, wouldn't let me shake this one. --Patricia Smith