IBPC Winning Poems, 2010, Congratulations Poets! Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Winning Poems for January, 2010
Judges Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar
Congratulations!

First Place
Eureka Springs
by Jude Goodwin
The Waters


Now that’s a big Jesus
and it’s not how I know him at all.
Imagine living under someone’s father
image like that, looks like
he’s blocking the door. “I do this
for you, my son.” Look mister,
I’m hankering for East. I’ve done
the Berlin Wall slab, the Liberty
replica, time’s come for passing
the great white milk carton. The real
Jesus never grew old and he was skinny.
I held him once, in college. I could feel
his ribs. His heart hammered
like a ruby-throated hummingbird,
I felt the wind from his wings
for years. This big theme park
messiah, unrevolving and without
an elevator, this isn’t Jesus.
It’s his body guard. It’s the man
blocking the tunnel down
to the bomb shelters. It’s the guy
who won’t let you into the ER
to watch your mother die. It’s the cop
who holds you back on the grass
as your friends and ex-wife move
all your belongings out of the house
and into a cube van, it’s the shape
you make on the cellar floor
where you wait for the end.
The real Jesus played guitar,
bending his body around the music
like a gourd. His skin was brown
and smelled of cinnamon.


Eureka Springs is a glorious re-envisioning of the famous 2 million pound mortar and steel statue of Jesus of the Ozarks. We're enamored of the way this poem takes the familiar image of Jesus, welcoming arms outstretched, and transforms the gesture to reveal our more earthly and unholy fathers, though in the end, returns the messiah to a humble and ultimately human figure. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne Laux



Second Place
Snow
by Judy Swann
The Waters


It is a time that says enough, hush.
If we’re lucky, no car will groan past into the glove of our silence.
Though there are schools and businesses, we will not leave home.
Though there is electricity stored in batteries and a power grid and running water, we lay modestly under our blankets.
Though there are apples and kolatchen and bacon, though there is cabbage, we are not hungry.

Life holds still, like a painting or a mountain.


"Snow" is a small, quiet poem that becomes larger and larger as it progresses, climbing gracefully upwards into its final powerful image. We're especially taken with the syntax and simplicity of this piece. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne Laux



Third Place
Tiger, Tiger
by Mitchell Geller
Desert Moon Review


(With profound apologies to William Blake)

Tiger, Tiger, driving right
into the tree that fateful night;
how indignant was thy spouse
to send thee fleeing from thy house?

Charming children, winsome wife,
fortune to enrich thy life.
Can a trull, however sultry
force thee into thine adult’ry?

In what distant bleak terrain
hid what passes for thy brain?
Did the itch within thy loins
make thee pay for love with coins?

Hero of that long walk, spoiled,
how didst thou become embroiled
with these sluttish, venal sirens,
so removed from tees and irons?

Art thou sinful? Art thou daft?
Are the balls and wood and shaft
that fill thy mind and heart and eyes
not the ones that earn a prize?

Tiger! Tiger! See thy pastor,
or a shrink, thy lust to master.
In thy quest for venery
did any bimbo NOT make thee?


Who can resist this occasional poem about the great golf pro lately in the news for his flagrant peccadillos? A clever, deft, mini tour de force-- the informal language playing against rigors of form-- this is a quirky poem of questions that continues to surprise and delight. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne Laux




Honorable Mentions

Wig
by Michael Harty
Wild Poetry Forum


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.


Takazumi
by Bren Lyons
criticalpoet.org


I sit awfully upright, silent
in my Japanese room: tatami mats,
the walls squared away
the hanging scroll.
Don’t forget the garbage,
the wife trills out and the door
clicks shut: she is away to work.
I pull out the shining sword
and lay it upon my lap,
sharp as a bastard,
you could shave with this fucker.
Breathe in, breathe out,
become Japanese.
I stare at the scroll,
trying to make out the Kanji,
this looks like “world” and “within”
and then there’s a load of squiggly pigeonshit
and then the sirens kick in,
the ambulances, dragging heartsore
victims to clapped-out hospitals.
I stare some more at the scroll.
Stare long enough and you might learn something.
I like this summer kimono,
it allows you to scratch your balls
comfortably, no need for zips or retainers
and the squirrels, they run about
in the trees, beyond the window,
they run about in the piece of the wood
where we had to bury poor fuckin Paul.
They haven’t found him yet; chances are
they never will. The good thing about this room
is that it has no mirrors. I mean to say,
you don’t need to look at yourself. Ever.


Post Apocalypse in Polo Park
by Don Schaeffer
Pen Shells


The end of the world
comes with a grumble
and small fires
licking at the trees;

but the people die
at the hands of one another.
The cold comes from
failure of mercy,
not the winter.

That’s why the bus trip home
is magnified. Those icey
lights which subtract the color
and the deep Winter panic
of the Winnipeg cold.

I’m a deeply lonely man
so I just understand.
I want the voice
of a friend in the night.

[Cleo_Serapis]

Winning Poems for February, 2010
Judges Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar
Congratulations!

First Place
What
by Jude Goodwin
The Waters


if each of the world’s 6 billion people
wrote one poem today
on a single folded sheet
and stapled it each to the other’s,
end to end. The paper chain would reach
around the world twenty-one
thousand times. Earth, the tenement,
with six billion poems flapping
like bedsheets in the air
above our streets, some blood
marked, some greyed
by the smoke from our frankfurter
stands, most white
like belly feathers and we all
have to look up. Is it time
to cut the poetry loose? The news
papers cry and the people
pull out their scissors.
The poems launch themselves
upward, it takes only half of them
to link humanity to the moon, the rest
carry on past,. We watch
with our telescopes
and iPhones until they are gone.
Well that’s that then isn’t it ?
the poets of the world
might say. They’ve known all along,
about the numbers -


We hear this kind of calculation used everywhere today: If you lined up all the polystyrene foam cups made in just one day, they would circle the earth. If all the glass bottles and jars collected through recycling in the U.S. in 1994 were laid end to end, they'd reach the moon and half way back to earth. Every day, Americans use enough steel and tin cans to make a steel pipe running from Los Angeles to New York and back again. (Not a bad idea, if you put a bullet train in that pipe.) This poem uses the same conceit, but for poetic purposes, making a paper chain of poems strung like a clothesline above the tenement of the earth. It's a poem about poetry, but also about humanity and art, struck through with humor, and ending with a nod to reality. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne Laux



Second Place
A Question of Nakedness
by Melanie Firth
Wild Poetry Forum


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.


We liked this poem for its generosity to the aging body in all its guises, its scars and scabs and folds, its furrows and deadly moles. We also like the innovative use of language and syntax: "The body's gumption. How it breaks/ on time, indulgence and self-harm./The egging-on of the virile seed." --Joseph Millar & Dorianne Laux



Third Place
Absence of Detail
by Debbie Calverley
criticalpoet.org


Today there is nothing to write
serious or otherwise, the wind blows.
Ridiculous to sublime the snow falls
scoops of vanilla ice without the cream.
Around the room’s throat, dark hands
of night close, while candles wax
their poetics onto tabletops, the cat’s
silhouette looms in the hallway
her tail a taper, the colour of flame.

The round of moon reminds me of a shape
his head cradled against a black cushion -
Tonight there is nothing to write.


This poem moves from image to image, from scoops of ice cream to the dark hands of night, from the flame of a cat's tail to a surprising use of that old standby, the moon. Also a poem about poetry, it becomes a poem in spite of the poet's most common complaint. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne Laux



Honorable Mentions

Ars Poetica #7
by Tim Blighton
Desert Moon Review


The unraveling is slow: under red cellophane, black
birds weave around themselves; punctuation
strung together without words; the patterns

dissolve into street lamps and bug zappers,
stuttering and angry ghosts
trapped in their own vaults. Dusk,

a deep sealing breath, brings a bouquet
of bubbles, stars and debris to the surface. Because,
poetry is any quiet night

translated by those who have only hammers and bells:
every firefly strung through the dandelion seed
like fallen Christmas lights; every sparrow dissolved

into a bat, like a bicycler signaling; every cicada
returning from the industry of mating to lay
its labor inside thinly-cut wood: over

and over, the batches will nestle in the ink of sleep, until
years later—after each creator is consumed,
perhaps, by a bird made flesh from the night—small

tunnels will burst open, nymphs rise
out, crawl into undergrowth whose roots
they’ve fed upon for years, and molt into song.


O be Joyful
by Judy Swann
The Waters


That July, rectangular, he crept backwards.
He loved the mats of purslane on August
earth, where he lay his face,

and Nikka, the German Shepard,
not mutual, and by December with tin
ear, burbled to the gamelon.

At three, suddenly verbal, he claimed
to love me 92 olds and 47 pounds.
I love you he said, 32 - 14 - 7 hours.

He loved my eye and my other eye,
loved his father’s lymphoma’s nodes,
kissed them and said, Now we’re set.

I taught him to say Je t’adore,
which he pronounced “Such a Joe.”
Don’t go, he told me, Such a Joe, Mother.


Triolet on a Line by Billy Collins
by Antonia Clark
The Waters


How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death.
– from “The First Night”

How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death.
How wordlessly we tremble or embrace
the thought of it, knowing we will give up breath,
language, selfhood in the face of death.
And, even then, I won’t pretend that faith
will save us. This life is all we know of grace.
How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death
How wordlessly we tremble or embrace.