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IBPC Winning Poems, 2009, Congratulations Poets! |
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Feb 12 09, 10:01
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Mosaic Master

Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep

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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.
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"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner 
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Nov 24 09, 22:30
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Mosaic Master

Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep

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First Place Certain in my Immortality - 1947 by Alice Folkart BluelineThe park public pool, huge and blue, even in polio season my favorite place, everyone taking the same risks equally, and the wise lifeguards, maybe sixteen at best shouted, little girl, little girl, get back to the shallow end.
We couldn’t see the polio germs in the blue water, nor clinging to our sun-reddened backs, nor beaded on our eyelashes, nor between our little toes, so we paid no mind to the calls of ‘little girl, little girl,’ and went on swimming where the water was darker blue.
Maybe those polio germs got some of those kids, maybe the blond boys with freckles on their noses, the ones who had water fights at the other end of the pool, the ones who also didn’t listen to the life guards’ shouts of, “Hey, guys, knock it off! No water fights.
Maybe those polio germs got the fat lady in the flower-petal swim cap, or the old man with the belly as big as a whole baby pig, or the skinny old woman, all angles like an erector set, but they didn’t get me and they didn’t get the life guards and I swam every day that summer, certain in my immortality."Polio is associated with water. Remember FDR. While sailing in Canadian territory in 1921, he fell into the water. After getting on board he felt a chill, and in two days, was paralyzed from the waist down. The narrator's memory belongs to 1947, when the polio vaccine was not yet available. Now that swine flu is circulating, there is one more reason to relate to this beautiful and meaningful poem. Perhaps the poet is being ironic, because in spite of imminent danger, she speaks of a sense of immortality. Nevertheless, the polio situation is similar to any other risk-taking experience that we face in life. We usually cross our fingers, hope for the best, and assume that the misfortune will not fall upon ourselves." --Majid NaficySecond Place String theory (Shrodinger’s coffin) by Jessica Haynes Moontown Cafe breathe in and out, ribs up and ribs down like a flexible cage
It’s strange, at least I think, how many pretty phrases English has for ”dead”.
so maybe if string theory can be trusted (my heart on a broken thread) if I never see you lying there (skin like lilies after frost hands like too soft marble) maybe if I never hear the words (passed away, to a better place so sorry, such a tragedy)
maybe I can bring you back; if I can only choose which thread to follow which one to tug like yarn in a labyrinth I’ll string it through the darkness so you can follow it home."One does not have to know the "string theory" as a mathematical theory for describing the properties of fundamental particles or Erwin Schrodinger, the Austrian physicist, in order to enjoy this touching and whimsical poem. Our poet approaches the question of "death" similar to the views of my countryman Omar Khayyam, with the difference that Khayyam sees the fate as a puppeteer and our poet as a modern physicist. The ending is especially playful, when the poet wants to shake a string through which the deceased can find his way back home." --Majid NaficyThird Place Without salt by Sarah J. Sloat Desert Moon ReviewRorschach of the laundry sack –
I pinch your bottom and some see the long maw of the crocodile in a shadow play
or a primitive insect, a locust, maybe a mother who won’t let go.
Little intimate of the bedclothes, into your muzzle go rags and nightgowns, trappings and briefs,
gnawed but not pierced, not discussed, not disclosed.
Could you speak, your voice might be twang or chirp, but you come from the church that touts
shut your trap as first commandment, a monk’s tongue sworn to silence.
When your joint snaps, when it rejects resting ajar, all that is conjured is the clack
of a castanet, terse, reluctant, a foot stamped to discourage dance.
Second cousin to the mousetrap, tense and cunning as a Gemini, you’re yin/yang with an oral fixation
though upside down on the clothesline, your silhouette
reveals the inverse, a contraption that needs both to take in and keep,
the house’s clampdown, the control freak."'Rorschach' is a psychology test named after Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychologist, who showed his subjects standard inkblots to analyze their interpretations. When I read this well-crafted poem for the first time, I did not know of Rorschach, and yet I felt that the clothespin described in this poem is itself being psycho-analyzed." --Majid NaficyHonorable Mention
‘Appy ‘Our by Stuart Ryder The Poets' GravesA week an’ a day shreddin’ me soles ont’ Pennine Way. Back int’ town,
straight tut’ pub: order some rolls – “Good ‘onest grub”. Pints, get ‘em down!
Well-oiled, me legs lollin’, Ah lounged, me mind mullin’ o’r background cha’ – simple but good n tha’…
then our fittie barmaid with flut’rin’ eyes an’ ‘uge tits says Ey-oh Stu! Stands o’r me wicked like, but’rin’ bread an’ Ah risk a kiss. She does, too.
Pink slabs of ‘am wi’ a garlic mayo. An’ when she gives me a refill, a golden sunbeam glances off me ‘ead.
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"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner 
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Posts in this topic
Cleo_Serapis IBPC Winning Poems, 2009 Feb 12 09, 10:01 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for February 2009
Judge Elena Karina... Mar 21 09, 07:30 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for March 2009
Judge Elena Karina By... Apr 4 09, 08:35 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for April 2009
Judge Duncan Mercredi... May 6 09, 16:42 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for May 2009
Judge Duncan Mercredi
... Jun 7 09, 16:21 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for June 2009
Judge Duncan Mercredi ... Jul 6 09, 17:42 Cleo_Serapis Oh WOW!
Even though I'm on vacation thi... Aug 12 09, 15:15 Peterpan Congratulations Honourable Mentions!!... Aug 13 09, 09:01 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for July 2009
Judge George Szirtes
C... Aug 17 09, 19:14 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for August 2009
Judge George Szirtes... Sep 12 09, 18:36 Cleo_Serapis September's winners have been announced - I... Oct 7 09, 11:21 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for September 2009
Judge George Szir... Oct 9 09, 18:08 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for October 2009
Judge Majid Naficy
... Oct 20 09, 19:23 Peterpan Hello Wally and Cleo!
Is this the first time ... Oct 22 09, 04:11 Cleo_Serapis Hi Bev,
No - actually Eric (Merlin) placed secon... Oct 22 09, 05:50 Peterpan Thanks Cleo!
You must be very proud!
Bev Oct 22 09, 06:06 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for December 2009
Judge Majid Naficy... Jan 17 10, 20:29
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