IBPC Winning Poems, 2009, Congratulations Poets! Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Winning Poems for January 2009
Judge Elena Karina Byrne
Congratulations!

First Place
New Neighbors
by Eric Rhohenstein
criticalpoet.org


Yellow jackets ascend like mortar fire from the cherry’s split trunk.

Spikes of fennel rise in the side yard,
where the garden was before the old man died;
his grandson somersaults through a choke of new clover.

The day is dry;
I should be cutting lawn.

squirrel at the birdfeeder
ground-skirt of grackles
the village the village!
fire alarm hum crescendo, and again

Much like autumn wind: product of a gavel falling.

(Soon enough, the cherry’s branches set against a winter skin of sky)

Boy, do you hear the pop songs aging,
aging from kitchen windows?

(Across Erie, the edge of Canada erupting from spring lake-mist)

Some things are broken before they’re ever bent,
but only some.

(One day, the summery inside of a woman)

hay-rolls at the velvet
edge of vision sunrise sunset
and how it goes,
and how it went.

As if this was the start of anything;
it’s only a lion’s mouth grown wider, wider, roaring.

Much like your mother’s: the logic of donning play-clothes, of not missing dinner.

farmers’ daughters fatten up
we sons of nothing much
the village cream is drawn
cup by cup make whey! make whey!

Afternoon dogs sing the pressure of dawn.


"New Neighbors" ignites a fresh, sensory motion forward. At "the edge of vision" the poem revitalizes literal vision alongside the figurative vision of the mind's eye, "how it goes." Language in motion becomes a key process of seeing through an ever-changing domino-effect of metaphor: yellow jackets ascend, a grandson somersaults--crescendo, autumn wind, gavel falling and so on, until the poem reaches the marvelously mundane-sublime place where "dogs sing the pressure of dawn." --Elena Karina Byrne



Second Place
First Frost
by Christopher T. George
FreeWrights Peer Review


A last ochre magnolia leaf twitches
like the index finger of a dying man;

under the ginkgo, yellow leaves spread
& all the birds are in motion, swooping,

diving: robins, starlings, cardinals,
a brace of cheeky blue jays—o one vaults

into the magnolia like a trapeze
artiste and devours a bud.


"First Frost" is a Buddhist-like, automatopoetic polaroid view of nature, targeting our vulnerability of perennial-impermanence where a magnolia leaf "twitches like the index finger of a dying man." The use of assonance and subtle end rhyme keep the poem beautifully close-fisted, bud-like, ready to be devoured. --Elena Karina Byrne



Third Place
Dinner With the Ghost of Rilke
by Laurie Byro
Desert Moon Review

Come here, to the candlelight.
I’m not afraid to look on the dead.

I was confused by snakes looping
around your neck, the little girl voice that you had
to swallow in order to please your mother. I told you
as you twirled a red flag to draw away the slathering

wolves that you would never disappoint me.
The crumbling bridge where we said our goodbyes
all those years ago must even now contain
the echoes of our voices sleeping in its seams.

How many inexhaustible nights did I stay awake
to answer your letters? You asked me to steal something
risky, something I couldn’t take back across the street.

Greedy for praise I filled my pockets with
sugar. Outside the café the night becomes a snow globe.
Held in your gaze, winter takes me back.


"Come here" the beginning of "Dinner With the Ghost of Rilke" commands. Because of the strength of diction, we follow this instruction and immediately become participatory, complicit observers. Rilke's "necessary irrepressible... definitive utterance" colors the voice that is swallowed, a presence, nevertheless, heavy as two pockets full of sugar. --Elena Karina Byrne



Honorable Mentions
Taste Buds of Children and Mock Adults
by Thane Zander
Blueline


We bleed on pavements decorated in childish flowers,
discharge our vehemence in toilet bowls swallowing
large tracts of shit, shyte, shovel it out and spread
onto a garden decorated with summers hues,

placate the dandelion as it swims aloft on wispy winds,
seeking Monarch Butterflies to caress in death throes,
excrete your discontentment on the laps of executives
when the family savings invested in stocks, tumble

like a dryer on spin cycle, the cold cycle reserved
for her husbands dying corduroys, the colour sticking
to off white socks and travel brochures from a back pocket,
ready to fly first class with crumpled shirts and dungarees

wearing thin around the butt, years of sitting at a computer
and conversing to faceless names, except the ones that lie
when they post an avatar of indifference and cheek, swallow
the last Rhubarb sandwich on a plate filled with regret and woes

leftover like a dying man's left testicle after an operation to cure
the cancer of his family passed down to him, his brother long dead
and buried in another garden setting, flowers in pots and agee jars
no lid required, the dried arrangement last longer in summer's sun,

We eat curdled milk, drink dipped honey crusties, pass the jam
so youngun's can leave a bloody trail on the white tablecloth,
and the ants and bees can leave a tell tale sign of their visit,

my wife said she could smell ants,
me; I avoid bees like the plague.



Talking Terror
by Sachi Nag
The Writer's Block


On our way to Fundy City in ten
inches of snow, a familiar cab driver
asked me if I lost anyone in those sixty
hours of Mumbai.

We couldn’t take our eyes off
the Christmas lights, and the carols
on the airwaves, so haunting, we were feeling
kinship in the gravy of victimhood,

when the hardened ice beneath the slush
stunned the front tyres, and we skidded
rear-ending a parked van and spun
over the edge into a pile of snow

from last year. Strangers stopped by
with shovels and hooks, powering us out.
We dusted jackets, shook hands;
restarted, slow, almost like roadkill,

eyes riveted along the routine way -
now as sinuous as a strange
white feathered boa - the cabbie's sure hands
shaking at the wheel.

[Cleo_Serapis]

Winning Poems for May 2009
Judge Duncan Mercredi
Congratulations!

First Place
Mariposa
by Tim Blighton
Desert Moon Review


for Karen

1.
What can I do? My fingertips have rope burns,
but the sky has been quiet for days. Nightly,
I roam a sea of barstools with nothing more
than shot glasses for ballast, while all doors exit

into a spinning compass of neon stars
and vomit. Sometimes, the difference
between coursing the tradewinds or drifting alone
is an unspoken lie between strangers.

2.
The eye accepts all it can: the glare
of snow, the black of velvet
in a ring case, or the old note
on a steamy mirror. Without light

we would have less to presume. We
might accept our accidents and causality
as reminders that we can’t always
see where we’re going.

3.
The moon is a busker, borrowing as it travels.
I contemplate light refracting in the empty
glass in front of me. The bartender leaves
the bottle; from the counter, it is fluorescent.

4.
You find me in a mouth of sediment, worn
by the sun’s returning tides. Your hair is hemp
woven with lilacs and anchored
to your prayer beads, dangling between

us. I sink, unable to decide. Your hands
open into a butterfly (mariposa you say).
The narrow alleys flood with snow-melt. Your smile,
angular and nomadic, is cast

into the busy streets as you turn. Let me release
your hair and draw it close; let me set sail.


"I roam a sea of barstools with nothing more than shot glasses for ballast, while all doors exit into a compass of neon stars and vomit." The above line by itself says it all. I have been there, I have sat next to this writer in every seedy bar, in every dive and have met all those night time companions that he hints have accompanied him on that great journey into the darkest recesses of humanity. Yet somehow he finds a beauty in this place and I too have found that same peace with these strangers. He just says it better than I could though I have tried." --Duncan Mercredi



Second Place
Evidence Hanging on a Rusty Nail
by Brian J. Mackay
Moontown Cafe


I found your old football boots this morning;
they were hanging on a rusty nail in the shed
next to my spare salmon fly rod.
Cobwebs stretched from lace to lace
and trailed from rubber studs like filigree.

You stored your trophies in a stained tea chest,
so I searched for evidence of silver laurels.
Each medal had a photograph for a partner;
black and white smiles from young boys,
all victorious, all proud of their triumphs.

The shed was dressed in dust and memorabilia;
shirts and socks and shorts, tiny rags for grimy
windows. Its boards were rotting and hinges
collapsing through years of careless abandonment
and sadness. I knew you couldn’t take me, brother.

I held your old football boots this morning,
they were where you always left them.
I’m going to polish them today, or tomorrow;
but now, I stroke the fifty franc statue you bought
in Lourdes, and rest my brow on your blue pillows.


"How many times as one dug out old photographs and recalls days of laughter and tears? Well words can do the same, "each medal had a photograph for a partner" each line bringing with it a sense of loss, a feeling of sadness. Then another line, " I held your old football boots this morning, they were there where you always left them" and a smile forms recalling happier days. There is sadness here, some tears and hope, hope that somehow dressing up the old boots will bring a sense of closure." --Duncan Mercredi



Third Place
The Marsh at Dusk
by Steve Meador
FreeWrights Peer Review


I enter the marsh
with a rabbit’s foot,
a four leaf clover
and knowledge that evening
arrives from the west.
When the sun rests on the tallest reeds
I turn and carry it on my back.
My senses, stropped by adrenaline,
will lead me to the fleece of safety.
I taste thunder before it coagulates,
smell rain as it gathers in clouds.
A moccasin’s yawn rivals the bellow
of a fire-breathing bull. Gurgling,
from a gator’s nostrils, magnifies through
valleys of cattail stems, reaches my ears
as harpie screams. If scraping happens
along tectonic plates, I will feel it.
Every splash and swish of the paddle
whips up a tornadic whirlpool.
Dusk evaporates. Fear bubbles
like magma, hardens in my kayak’s wake.
Once the plane to open water is broken
I turn the bow toward the sulfurous
throat that wants to swallow me
and laugh, like an Argonaut come home.


"Coming from a small northern village before the advent of modern conveniences, a line such as " when the sun rests on the tallest reeds, I turn and carry it on my back" resonates within me and I remember walking in the reeds as a child seeing only the sun and sky above me. This work stirs those feelings and I travel back to those innocent times and that magnificent gift we've been given, imagination." --Duncan Mercredi



Honorable Mentions
Dad Never Read Novels
by Christopher T. George
FreeWrights Peer Review


He was more of a Newsweek,
Huntley-Brinkley-Cronkite man,
but before he died when ill he read
steamy big gamehunter type novels,
on the scent of rhino and cougar.

Dad would rage about the plots
just like he’d rage at the news and
the folk who “climb on the taxpayer’s
back.” I found a couple of saucy
paperbacks hidden in his closet,
checked the well-thumbed bits.

He read my would-be novel,
offered persnickety edits,
always missed the big picture,
complained that I was being mildly
porno (tho’ it was more pun-
ography). He had begun life as

an English socialist, grousing
about Harold Macmillan and
people who “never had it so good.”
Argued about America’s need for
socialized medicine. But latterly

he’d developed a passion for
talk radio. I feel certain
he’d long forgotten Labour.
I have the notion that today
he’d love Rush Limbaugh.



The absence of spaces between words
by Alexandre Nodopaka
Pen Shells


Trying to sustain my carnal hunger
from your single line response
I wrung myrrh and frankincense
from every letter of each word.

And when those exhausted
I darted my tongue on the punctuation
and like a chameleon I snatched
the single period ending your sentence.

All that did was water my mouth
inviting me to latch onto the spaces
separating your words and while trying
to reunite them by licking off the voids

I constructed an uninterrupted phrase
further enhanced by connecting with a twist
the ending to its beginning thus forming
a Mobius I entered skillfully its infinity.



Her obituary picture will look nothing like her
by Alex Stolis
Wild Poetry Forum


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.