IBPC WINNING POEMS in 2007, Congratulations! Options

[AMETHYST]

IBPC WINNING POEMS FOR DECEMBER 2006
Judge David Kirby

First Place:

A Poem That Thinks It Has Joined a Circus
by Liz Gallagher
Inside the Writer's Studio

A handkerchief is not an emotional hold-all.
A cup of tea does not eradicate all-smothering sensations.
A hands-on approach is not the same as a hand-on-a-shoulder
willing a chin to lift and an upper lip to stiffen.
A forehead resting on fingers does not imply that the grains
of sand in an hourglass have filtered through.
A set of eyes staring into space is not an indictment that the sun
came crashing down in the middle of the night.
A sigh that causes trembling and wobbly knees should be
henceforth and without warning trapped in a bell jar and retrained
to come out tinkling ivories with every gasp.
A poem trying to turn a sad feeling on its head does not constitute
a real poem, it is a can-can poem dancing on a pin-head
and walking a tight-rope with arms pressed tightly by its sides.



Judges Comments:

While some critics will tell you that movies about movies or plays about plays are self-involved and decadent, sometimes I feel as though poems about poems are the only ones worth writing. Why? Because, at the moment of "getting it," and this applies to the moment of reading the poem as well as writing it, there is no more electric charge than that which comes with seeing a poem strut its stuff. Of course, part of the poem's and the poet's and the reader's achievement is that none of these three essential elements of the artistic experience knows exactly how that experience works. Just as the tightrope walker has to wobble on the wire, so the poem has to shake and tremble in order to startle and amaze as much as this one does. --David Kirby




Second Place:

There Once Was a Daughter Who Lived in His Shoe
by Laurel K. Dodge
The Writer's Block

In the unmade bed, she had no legs.
The fruit that her mouth coveted

was bruised, the milk in the dark
refrigerator, watery and blue,

the bowl in the barren cupboard, cracked
and empty. Her legs were watery

and blue, her mouth unmade and bruised.
She was dark and cracked and empty.

She was covetous and blue.
She was barren. She had no fruit.

She was a cupboard, a bowl,
a refrigerator that could not be filled.

She was a bed no body slept in.
The leash waited, coiled in the dim hall.

The dog was dead, the birches, bark peeling,
bent; the hill she once scaled, slippery.

She was the dimness, the coil, the wait.
She was the peeling and the impossible

ascent. The dog was dad; she had no legs.
The dad was dead. She was unmade.



Judges Comments:

Is there anyone breathing who does not love fairy tales? The poet Miller Williams says that you ought to be able to explain any poem to a six year-old, and fairy tales do that for you. There's the surface story for the child in us all, but for you adult readers out there, there are elements reminding you that life is not all beautiful princesses and knights in shining armor. There are depths in this poem, disturbing ones: we look closely, we turn away for fear of seeing too much, and then, because of the poet's power to mesmerize, we find that we can't help looking again. --David Kirby


Third Place:

Escorting a Child Offender to a Wake
by Derek Spanfelner
The Critical Poet

Her body is crumpled plastic laid flat,
complexion waxy. Crow's feet mark
the tendencies of her nature. Her grandson,
my ward, tells me of milk and cookies,
the simple tenets she upheld, unquestioned kindnesses.
He wrote a poem about it Mom will read in eulogy.

We meet the rest outside, who greet each other
(hard-shelled and sentimental alike)
in the camaraderie of grief. This child,
who has shown younger cousins who is boss
by stripping their underwear and ignoring their pleas,
is a puffy-eyed prize in the open arms of his mother.
"My oldest (of eight)," she beams to obscure relatives.

The uncle auctions salvaged cars. Knuckles having
earned their gold, he asks questions as one acquainted
with the ease of plain answers. He offers money because
"he's a good kid at heart, always the first to help out."

I can't tell him how the boy put his hands around
their necks and threatened to kill them if they told.
Instead, I note more auspicious behavior, for the man
expects to run the value of therapy
through his calloused fingers and know
the knot will hold. I cannot tell him

that no boy is a convertible. That if a dent
could be smoothed, another is bound to surface;
that where I work, no one is ever fixed.



Judges Comments:

I'll add this poem to my list as I complete my stint as judge by saying that it, like so many others, could have easily been my first choice. This is a poem that I don't understand, though I offer my lack of comprehension as a supreme compliment. What I want to say is that this poem, like a lot of the many I have read during my time as judge, has what I call a meaningful ambiguity to it, a scary, hypnotic power which lets me know instantly that I'll be reading it again and again and getting more out of it each time. A thriller only works if the audience is slightly behind the detective's perceptions; if you know who done it from the beginning or if you never find out, you'll be disappointed, but if you're poised to shout "Aha!" a few seconds after the mystery's revealed, well, that's art, folks. I'm confident that that's what this poem is doing and will continue to do for me. That's how poetry works. --David Kirby





Honorable Mentions:

Beans (Curgina)
by Denise Ward
Lit With Kick!

September came like winter's
ailing child but
left us
viewing Valparaiso's pride. Your face was
always saddest when you smiled. You smiled as every
doctored moment lied. You lie with
orphans' parents, long
reviled.

As close as coppers, yellow beans still
line Mapocho's banks. It
leads them to the sea;
entwined on rocks and saplings, each
new vine recalls that
dawn in 1973 when
every choking, bastard weed grew wild.




Solitude
by Cherryl E. Garner
South Carolina Writer's Workshop

There is small art in solitude.
It shakes sometimes like random shock,

as though one spot explains the arc
or one fine point defines the line.

There is no talk when none's received,
when simple converse meets no mark,

as though the circle rolls the ball,
as though the line supports the box.

There is no black like night assigned
to pounding chest and clenched, cold heart,

as though the sphere explains the sky,
as though void space can break the fall,

when locking shut in one timeframe,
some voodoo shimmies out one name.




Beach
by Millard R. Howington
South Carolina Writer's Workshop

I liked to jog to
the pier my one day off and have
breakfast, gazing at an ocean
through salt stained windows.
There was a bar nearby, mainly
deserted in the off season and
I'd stop in, enjoy a brewski, flirt
a little with the waitress there;
she loved to draw my attention
to the rare big busted patron and
ask me if I knew how they got
that way. On the slow walk back
to my summer rate motel, I skirted
water's edge and wondered just
how long that little sandpiper
with the one leg was going to last.

[AMETHYST]

Winning Poems for May 2007
Judge Bryan Appleyard

FIRST PLACE:


Refugee sproutings across the Continental
by Mike Keo
MiPo

Brother,

let us find refuge in
unabashed love;

the crescent blade
tucked against your waist
held like an organ for self flight;

my sac of collected mango pits
I planted for redemption but never sprout
fruits in this land of many winters;

let us pawn them all in for;

tears and honey,
hummingbirds and misfortune,
naga and lock gates,

so we may one day burrow our hands so
deep into a furious hive of dashes and discomfort

that we are fortunate enough
to understand what hold

the spirit is not war and calls to home,

but a monsoon of poetry & weeps
that fastens the mouth

sweet like a Mekong vernacular
sticky with the weight of America's

orange blossom.

First Place - Commentary
Refugee sproutings across the Continental
by Mike Keo
MiPok

"A poem with genuine originality that seems at ease with itself - it is not straining for expression. The rhythm insinuates itself into your mind and the imagery is cleverly restrained." --Bryan Appleyard

SECOND PLACE:

The Sandwich Hour
by Yoly Calderon
New Cafe

Eyes draw a horizon on mine.

There's a hint of sweet tobacco

breaking away from his aftershave,

scurrying down the nook of my nose.

"Mind if I join you?"

Do I mind?

I do and don't.

But how do I explain with one

hour for bellies to restock?

"Let's go."

We head out of the office

onto a sunlit runner.

All the while we're touching

on summer camp for the kids

and European cruises versus

cleaning gutters on vacation.

There's an unoccupied table

under the pink crown of a redbud

tree. We sit. I cross my legs.

Topics are sustained with mid

drone voices: the dream of being

invisible; how he almost became

a vegan; why people marry,

(I uncross my legs) and divorce.

It is moments away until

the hour- One round hour,

like a corkscrew begins to top the wine.

I finish my soft drink- let ice chips

skate down my throat. We get up

to leave when he reaches over to me,

but pulls back as if I'm a stove

whose burners are turned to high.

"You have an eyelash on your cheek."

Fig. There's fig in his aftershave.

Second Place Commentary

The Sandwich Hour
by Yoly Calderon
New Cafe

"A very simple idea very well executed. This is a narrative poem, a story turned into verse with the lightest of touches, a delicacy that reflects the tentative anxieties of the encounter." --Bryan Appleyard

THIRD PLACE:

In a City Made of Seaweed
by Dave Rowley
Desert Moon Review

Double Sonnenizio on Two Lines by Ilya Kaminsky*

In a city made of seaweed we danced on a rooftop, my hands
were slippery dancers, your body a love-flung shorebreak

arched at the hips. Now a city of sand slips beneath us too, castle
rooftops battered by the tide's foamy tentacles: such trembly aggressors,

such lurchers of reclamation. We scrawl our story in lines
of seaweed cursive. One lover is a dollop of oyster, the other

a mother-of-pearl cradle, we cling tight as the dance-floor shifts.
Such stubbornness flings us through a city of kelp; it's complicated

among the olive pods. Stubborn love is like a leatherjacket, that tough city
swaggerer, or a porcupine fish filled with air--you suck up what the ocean hands

you, whether krill, or squid's black ink. The seabed is a rooftop, our story
made for flight: streaming from our gills in stubborn recklessness

these words of love are little bubbles, dancing, rising on a dare.
Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air.

*First and last lines are by Ilya Kaminsky.

Third Place Commentary
In a City Made of Seaweed
by Dave Rowley
Desert Moon Review

"Luscious and dense language used to entangle imagery and associations. The poem creates a dazed hallucinated atmosphere." --Bryan Appleyard

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

It
by Carla Conley
The Critical Poet

"Life begins unless you interrupt it,"
the old man said and what, inside a womb,
is any kind of isn't? There's no room
for nothingness, not anything on earth
is nothing: only tiny, timid, not
ready yet, but moving. Whether want
attends it, still it is: it makes no matter
until the metal sharpens, comes to scatter...
then, the remnants leave because there is no room
for lifelessness inside a mother's womb.
It wasn't: I was disposed to disagree
but then it was, though maybe it would be
a cunning seahorse? Next time that we met,
it had gained a head and stunted limbs and yet
it maybe wasn't - somehow, I supposed
I'd love it if it were. They found its nose
and something pulsing: heart. I started looking
for missing parts, each little finger crooking;
each foot unfurling. What a dreadful eye -
like a raisin, baked - are we sure that it's alive?
It tested waters just as I would do,
pushing boundaries - now it was a "you"
to whom I crooned as it paddled around the place:
here be monsters. Soon there was a face -
Are we sure that it's alive? When did desire,
all by itself, create? When did despair,
all by itself, destroy? I tell you never:
life/death, plus or minus, the endeavor
needs a being. We are sure it is alive
but life is a pinpoint, not sure to survive.
and soon there was a need to hurry out
of the straitened quarters. Both of us grew stout.
This small world couldn't hold him, mama's girth
stretched tight, horizons cracking. This is birth:
what starts as frail as smoke attains a crown -
his head, his little body cloaked in down -
triumphant as a king. His little hand
finds my fingers finally.
I finally understand.

Honorable Mention
It
by Carla Conley
The Critical Poet

"A dramatic meditation in being, this holds the reader with a serious of gentle surprises." --Bryan Appleyard




First Date
by Sally Arango Renata
South Carolina Writer's Workshop

As I turn towards the lake
I feel his glacial blue eyes
sizing me up from behind.

It's not hubris, it's a knowing,
an itch at the back of my brain.

He's not my type.

So why the flounce,
the undulation?

My hips feel the freedom
to be rounder, my legs longer.
I stride aware of how the peach
on my toes contrast
with cerulean sandals.

My body is talking to me
and to him, in a swill
of invisible words
that will never be
mentioned

unless he is the one
to make the first move.



Honorable Mention
First Date
by Sally Arango Renata
South Carolina Writer's Workshop

"Like The Sandwich Hour, a narrative poem of great delicacy and precision." --Bryan Appleyard





Jaycee Beach
by Millard R Howington
South Carolina Writer's Workshop

If I didn't jog north to the Dania
Beach pier then I'd thread the sand
dunes south to Jaycee Beach. The
dune grass whipped at my legs as
I pushed myself in sprints through
the loose sand, then a veer over to
the wetter stuff near the gentle surf
and those clouds rising up like mighty
white towers guarding the ocean, and
tinged pink for the sunrise. I went
for the coffee from an ancient canteen
truck parked there under the swaying
palms, and the lovely blonde lady
who leaned well over to serve.


Honorable Mention
Jaycee Beach
by Millard R. Howington
South Carolina Writer's Workshop

"A moment captured with something of the insouciance of Frank O'Hara." --Bryan Appleyard