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IBPC Winning Poems, 2010, Congratulations Poets! |
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Jan 26 10, 18:38
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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 Eureka Springs by Jude Goodwin The WatersNow 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 LauxSecond Place Snow by Judy Swann The WatersIt 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 LauxHonorable Mentions
Wig by Michael Harty Wild Poetry ForumShe 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.orgI 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 ShellsThe 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.
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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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Mar 28 10, 20:00
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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 Eden in Winter by Russel Smith The Write IdeaIn a downtown park I find a marble Eve with broken hands and feet lying awake by a sleeping man, where he had carried her.
Unconscious, still he keeps her among the frost-bit weeds, a crippled captive to oversee his wretchedness.
New life sings in the branches, rattles the clinging leaves, chases the hard snow crunching sweet as halvah, beneath my feet.
Each lengthening day the sun climbs higher over us. I circle here; I listen to her muted voice.
She tells me we are naked, lacking even skins of animals, and having eaten of the tree of life, we could live forever.We are enamored of the city scene drawn here, the homeless man and his marble Eve, the "frost-bit weeds". The idea that these difficult surroundings can be somehow Edenesque. A mysterious poem that harkens back to the garden where all is naked and broken. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne LauxSecond Place nettles riff nettles the big tree by Steve Parker criticalpoet.orgthere at the confluence of radiators the boy sings
I knew you when you were small you remember back in the old days a father from outside swinging a man with a glider who said now then
now then what? someone they said did homosex stuff in a cinema after chopping nettles all day this was a betrayal of his wife/mother all day this was a betrayal
the boy was in bed with biscuits a torch the cold the deep cold
by the age of eight I was inured to cold I can take cold like I can take rejection warmth I see as too much frivolous politics
ancestral shame I can’t help your Grandfather who in a laudanum frenzy maybe it is not right to speak of the favourite goat whose spirit appeared over and over in the guise of a maiden always at dusk clutching a glass of chartreuse asking in chitin
to be served in the hemispherical bread oven where the bones were found behind the wall broken
later his girlfriends found these discoveries challenging uh uh uh uh uh she would say from her book he held so avid at night beneath the blankets in the torchlight uh uh uh uh uh he would say back in English Naval umaphore
tomorrow both of them scything nettles in the old garden at each other scarcely lookingA fractured narrative wherein the reader is moved through a series of arresting images, back towards an “ancestral shame”. The poem skips its frenetic way through politics and sex and memory, using a range of voices, all of them tied together through the starkly powerful scything of nettles." --Joseph Millar & Dorianne LauxThird Place Everything will be permitted, nothing will be desired by Laura Ring Wild Poetry ForumWe 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.This poem’s finely drawn map of the "bloodless" future makes us especially appreciate the last three lines that bring us back to the present, back into our living bodies: fingers, mouths, legs. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne LauxHonorable Mentions
Lot by Richard Moorhead Wild Poetry ForumI. 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.The First Cut by Lana Wiltshire Campbell Blueline Poetrythe tree surgeon came today at noon
made quesadillas on the sidewalk chanted accolades to the spore geist
the old ash kept silent waiting for the first incision the plum cried tiny flowersComfort by Cynthia Neely The WatersThe sheets were pristine, so clean. Wait, go back The air so clean yes the air like a baby’s breaching breath no,
wait. Back further.
Before my pen described a needle.
Still, before a needle stilled your life. And Mother needed not to cradle me or beg me
to remember floating on the bay. Before the needle sought its target, through belly swell, in amniotic sea.
Stop, wait,
further.
Before your father shaved my head. Before the wigs I didn’t like. Before I shopped for scarves instead.
No No No. Before the drip drip drip,
the cysplat poisoned veins discreetly positioned pans the vague white-coated comfort: You can always have another…
Before the errant cell Before I would tell them I chose me over you.
Yes, further, further
Before, before, when air was clean, when I was clean, and wings were filled, and you still floated on your own private bay.
Before I balanced on reflection’s edge, and lay quiet on such pristine sheets with stirruped feet.
Before I harbored sparrows in my breast and could not speak for fear of losing those that fluttered darkly to escape.Song for the Ghost of Gabriel Gomez by Emily Brink The Writers Block*about a classmate who died young
Your family buried you in your uniform, white and navy. I heard you grew wings in the grave and escaped in a lowrider.
You are closer to God than I. So tell me does he whisper in your ear, exactly where St. Lucy left her famous eyes?
You are descending into the crater of a volcano to resurrect Aztec virgins, you are watching over the young mothers crossing the Senora into the United States.
When you died an alcoholic priest wrote your elegy with trembling hands— Your brother, pockets full of heroin needles, was ashamed it wasn’t him who died.
And here I am, in the pitch of St. Raymond’s, surprised by tears. It has been so long since I knelt for anything.
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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, 2010 Jan 26 10, 18:38 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for February, 2010
Judges Dorianne L... Mar 1 10, 18:45 Cleo_Serapis Note: Sorry for the late posting - I had thought t... Jun 27 10, 06:39 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for May, 2010
Judge Fiona Sampson
Co... Jul 26 10, 07:35 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for June, 2010
Judge Fiona Sampson
C... Jul 26 10, 08:00 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for July, 2010
Judge Ruth Ellen Koch... Sep 6 10, 17:19 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for August, 2010
Judge Ruth Ellen Ko... Sep 6 10, 17:27 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for September, 2010
Judge Ruth Ellen... Oct 29 10, 08:17 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for October, 2010
Judge Paul Lisicky... Dec 28 10, 15:05 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for November, 2010
Judge Paul Lisick... Dec 28 10, 15:13 Cleo_Serapis Winning Poems for December, 2010
Judge Paul Lisick... Aug 28 11, 10:20
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