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 September, 2010
Judge Ruth Ellen Kocher
Congratulations!

First Place
Ways to Paint a Woman
by Lois P. Jones
PenShells


A handful sleepcorn drifts from the mouth
stammered true out towards the snow conversations. –Paul Celan

Sometimes you cannot say
what is in the heart.

Sometimes you have to paint it yellow—
listen with the eyes: honeycomb and maize,

golden rainflowers.
Transform with your softest brush

the way Lorca’s bathing girl liquifies
into water–half a head in fire,

sun burning a trail from forehead to cheek.
Graze the mouth with mango. Make time to blend

and take away. Use the green of a blind man
when he says you’re beautiful

and means you’re timeless.
Show what the light gave her

washing warmth into a neck
until it’s dune, a cliffside

that holds a head of surf.
Paint as you would before you awaken,

when sunlight falls like milkweed
and you are an empty silo

letting her grain fill you–
buttery malt and biscuit

for the love of honey.


This poem is stunning in language, in image, in music, and in form. The title of the poem is immediately intriguing and a great risk in that the reader comes to the first line, already, with great expectation. The much over-used couplet finds a home here, creating a subtle dynamic which, paired with the sometimes other-worldly imagery, leaves the reader feeling, at the end of the poem, as if she has emerged from a spell. A sense of enchantment drives this poem quietly, with an elegance that could easily have degraded into the sentimental. To instruct is no small task. Here, the speaker directs us to "Graze the mouth with mango. Make time to blend/and take away," to "Show what the light gave her," "listen with the eyes," and in each instance, I reader must believe and trust the transformative moment to be genuine. I am caught up so much in the language that, at the close of the poem, I very much want to go back to the beginning and read it again, and I feel to achieve this sense of intrigue and immediate longing in the reader is perhaps the most most imperative task of the poet. --Ruth Ellen Kocher



Second Place
Her Quinceañera
by Lynn Doiron
Poetry Circle


That five-story billboard of Corona cerveza
on the face of eight-story hotel Festival Plaza—
is cheesy to the point of charming—most days.
Tonight, it’s enchanting. Curbside, she’s disembarked
from her carriage cocoon, a long limousine,
discarded. A flutter of balloon-skirted girls,
all their dresses snowy white, circle, as if
she’s the rose queen of a singular garden.
Shoulders bare, a gown of pink burnished gold,
tiara, four inches of diamond light blooming
from rich coffee hair—she glows and seems
aware. That courtyard beyond Festival’s doors
says this night is hers, festooned in firefly
lights and white gifts for seasons
of being. Now her fingers press down
the volumes of gathers,
her attendants hush their buzz,
the youths in their white tuxedos
straighten buttoned vests and shoulders.
She is moving from sidewalk
inside, that girl that is now woman,
hands loosely quiet, open,
a bevy of wings at her back.


This poem represents a perfect marriage between the fantastic world we imagine and the concrete world in which we live. The poem accomplishes this pairing in a seemingly effortless execution of rich imagery and sparse language that demonstrates an accomplished ability to navigate the lyric narrative. What I enjoy most here is the simplicity of description. The writer takes enough small risks to elevate the language from something typical to something imbued with a sparse yet effective sense of the magical. Magic is no easy game in the lyric poem and can easily be over-done, over-emphasized, and over-wrought, but this writer handles the difficult task with great skill. The right of passage poem can also easily be typical, and yet here, we have "a bevy of wings," "a diamond light blooming," and "the rose queen of a singular garden," all images which illuminate the piece. I appreciate, as well, that the poem doesn't take itself too seriously (Festival Plaza --/is cheesy to the point of charming) which might well be the greatest triumph in a poem that invests so much in a singular, tender moment. --Ruth Ellen Kocher



Third Place
Ethics
by Helmuth Filipowitsch
Wild Poetry Forum


Our long goodbye begins
in the middle of hello’s,
coffee slow mornings, roses
opening to sunshine and to rain
where an ill-conceived pathway
tracks the lawn’s undulations
and ends abruptly at
the overgrown hedge.
There, an alien world exists.

You’re familiar with other worlds,
I’m not. The clay, which constricts
our garden, the clay which chokes
the roses and the radishes;
that clay defines me all too well.

I’m not malleable, not a flimsy
umbrella in a thunderstorm,
not Superman entering
a graffiti-stained telephone booth
to be captured between
conflicted identities.

I’m the man who secretly
cries at all the right moments
while watching a ‘chic flick’,
hums along in the silence
of elevators, believes every lie
as though it’s the birth
of an alternate universe.

I’m the man at the end of
a garden pathway, looking
with longing into his neighbour’s
back yard, wondering where
you’re going and memorizing
the six tender love scenes
which will entice you
to finally turn back.


The poem "Ethics" works on various levels for me, not the least of which is the imagery which is not only rich, but varied and unexpected. That "Superman entering/a graffiti-stained telephone booth," can co-exist in a poem where we also find "clay which chokes/the roses and radishes" is no small feat. This sort of contiguous use of image and sound create a tension in the poem between the ordinary and the sublime, between pop culture and the natural world, between the voice of the speaker and the voice of the life in which the speaker lives, if we can say that a life, itself, with the menagerie of articles in that life, can have a voice. The poem also exudes a confidence that contrasts the confessed vulnerability of the speaker, creating a curious tension as assertion meets the vulnerable utterance. I have to say that I especially love the final lines of the poem, that they acknowledge the sometimes saccharin underpinning of all we call 'romantic,' utilizing the ubiquity therein to achieve a alternately authentic, fresh, and successful, romantic turn as the poem closes. --Ruth Ellen Kocher