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 July, 2010
Judge Ruth Ellen Kocher
Congratulations!

First Place
Dreams: mobile
by Petra Klein
Salty Dreams


“to feel you’re not two billion other unselves is enough” — ee cummings

-1-

the doomed
invent help
and a secret window

the bruise is really a coral colored crystal

around the doorknob:
beasts split &
spit

on hot pillows
lips
part

give it to me, baby!

eyes possess the power of reckless
rubbing
or
in a blink
wide fields of
stairways & haunches

-2-

and so / the girl
moves in margins

nipples kidnapped
nuzzle
heavy metal

italicized
the contraption
shuts

&

his strokes fill her completed body
with long knots of shadows

who’s winning now?

shaggy
bonbon fingers
cream puff
late as snow
outside
rain starts to fall in clear strings
the razzle-dazzle of lightning
hits the ceiling

-3-

she remembers
the first time he came in her
she thought he was on the other side of the ocean

I’m making the waves too strong..

as her new brows grow in
too thin
she watches him through webs
and a million haunted cell/Ohs

once when she was at work
he moved her errors
and added a throne

-Later-

she wakes to dark skies
tumbling
into darker skies
and all the strings of rain have turned into ropes
she starts to search for some comfort he may have left behind

a sheet of angel dots:
tiny ushers covered in mist

the air is breathtaking, too big

-on the screen -
a funny commercial:
a girl whipping her shiny hair
back and forth
mouthless face
faintly glowing

-The Next Day-

piles of grayish light
option
lit
up
on the screen
please order more

what was the sense in that
the rain ropes were still falling
fatter & harder

all was as it had been
growing up was a lie
and her joints ached

she stands mute on the faded glass floor
one ear on and glittering

-phantom of the opera - the music of night-

we did know each other in france
my face was moon-sheer
and I wore a white gown
we stood in a place where branches hung
with all their brilliant leaves
slowly turning
you had been stripped of your birth-right
and had a cheek on one ash smudge
and I..
I was already dying of fear
your eyes said
calm
and
open
but squatting next to you
was the red outline
of a demon

-Static-

in the steam / stream
of the shower
my thoughts begin to unbraid

victims of too much heat

the fat cat
slides one paw
beneath the door

-At Work-

accused seams
gruel supper

forms copied
only to be filled in

strolling through the long corridors, keys jingling
she remembers running through alleys
his feet: brown & bare
fumbling hands
empty pockets

sickly stray dogs
ferocious fangs
& in the rotting garbage
a tarnished chain
hung with tears

oh! my love!
don’t let me stay
stuck
in past progressive tense

Okay, but I seem to be tacked to black paths.

-The Rain Suddenly Stops-

on the 4th level, the 3rd floor deck
glistens

“pretty plain, loony-sane”

once, during the time of heavy bell ringing
they took a nap on a round
wrought iron
balcony
he broke their circled rhythm by making
beads of blood appear on his skin

her first instinct was to lick them
acre by acre until her tongue became
too sticky and greedy

-Other Things.. The Night Sends Back Too Quickly-

laughter
jumpy solace
blocks
masks, rocks, false pretense

alienation

mosquitoes &
deep prisons


"Dreams: Mobile" interests me as a poem for it's razor edge handling of lyric, innovation, and tradition. The poem forms a narrative arc that takes us through various landscapes pieced together though a compressed and consistent attention to metaphor and metonymy. The work benefits as much from continuous imagery as it does from it's sequential form. I also find it very pleasing to find the long-poem format tackled by a poet who works in a minimalist style. Most, the work satisfies the reader's desire to find a song within its carefully wrought form. --Ruth Ellen Kocher



Second Place
Pantone 1665 C.
by Ben Johnson
The Poets' Graves


It is kumquats for Keats
and a celebration in couplets.

The Happy Birthday you won’t sing me
and the candles I won’t have.

It was seeing June in 1994
slumbering through an endless summer.

Tuesdays were clementines and liqueur
burning a stream-bed along the path of the throat.

Teeth cracking the Jaffa cake crust
releasing a tang as thick as lava to the tongue.

It was the first dress I ever brought you
still sitting in the wardrobe unworn.

The walks down Via dei Fori Imperiali
the sun burning off the wall

and that sunset in Paris
trellised through the Eiffel Tower.

It was the day you told me
and I sat lost within the wash of it.

Do you remember Frigiliana
and reaching out to pick the perfect fruit?


The writer here uses the repetitious elements of the form not so much to create a resonant refrain as to create a sort of imagistic causal chain that exists primarily as a series of isolated utterances. We search for a connection between those isolated utterances. We search for something that qualifies and so gives substance to "it" but are left to understand that that lack of signification of subject here becomes the scaffolding with which this poem is built. The approach this writer takes is one of utilizing the notion of 'the incomplete,' and the subsequent search for order that accompanies it. --Ruth Ellen Kocher



Third Place
Bone-Song
by Laurie Byro
Desert Moon Review


My mother’s bones served a purpose. Grounded
by all that brittle history, a desert coyote’s need
to lie down among sage, to strike a flinty spark,

a lather-talk inside a kettle of blue. Sand, grass,
flower-sky. An interesting canvas, or so we’ve been
taught. A veiny handed hag sleeps out with young

boys. Strange ghost-tumbleweeds rifle through
her thoughts. Father, she threatens rain. A scorpion
retracts its tail to sting. I don’t remember puppy dogs

or snakes. There is salt left behind on a varnished
gin-mill counter, pretzels twisted like my poor
old man’s back. There is a glinty fang-moon howling

through the desert night. A father’s hand, veined
like that, holds up a turtle knowing nothing can beat
the day out of him, not a tire’s wheel, not the sun

that’s burned clear through to his belly. Silently
we hunker down to drag their bones away. Silently,
they beg us to stay, sing our feeble praises.


"Bone-Song" utilizes an interesting conflation of lyric narrative with a disrupted narrative. The transformation of the concrete subject of the title immediately transcends the reader's expectation of an uninterrupted trajectory of image, story, song, or subject. The writer especially navigates the use of contiguous relationships at the end of the poem with great skill, drawing the reader into an ending that arrives through implication rather than assertion. The poems resonates most in these last lines as the poem showcases an adept understanding of lyric subtlety. --Ruth Ellen Kocher