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 June 2007
Judge Bryan Appleyard

Bad Weather
by Dale McLain
Wild Poetry Forum

You can grow accustomed to storms.
Every night they shake our sheetrock,
set the bricks trembling. Mortar remembers
it is only sand. Our jaunty roof begs
to be doffed. And I huddle within my frame
with dread and an awful wish that the past proves
its redundancies, that miles away the twister
will drop- not here, not now when I have just
remembered my own name.

When the windows bow like Galileo's glass
I begin to pray to deities yet unnamed,
beseech the clever stars that hide
behind the churning ceiling. I confess
that peace is not my plea. Instead I ask
for more colors and a measure of strength
to face the wind. The red oak fusses
at my window, whines and scratches to come in.

But it holds, this vine-covered house,
stands on its wide flat bottom, a prairie boat
anchored fast in hard white clay and history.
Within I slip off my shoes. Tonight is not the night
that I will walk on broken glass and wear the unmistakable
face of disbelief. The thunder's growl begins to lose
step with the lightning. In the attic rafters sigh
and creak like scrawny old men. I lay my head
on the last damp cloud where dreams of whirlwinds
and flying shingles wait. I sleep
like a town wiped off the map.


First Place
Bad Weather
by Dale McLain
Wild Poetry Forum

"A simple idea very well executed. Weather is a perennial subject for poetry. Here it is evoked almost as a conversation - both with the poet and with his house. The house 'remembers' and 'begs' while the poet is driven to introspection and prayer by the storm. Rhymically controlled and very firm in its imagery, this is a satisfying poem." --Bryan Appleyard


The Daughter of Antiochus
by Adam Elgar
Writer's Block


I am no viper, yet I feed
on mother's flesh that did me breed. (Pericles, Prince of Tyre I i 65-6)

No point dividing day
from night since both
are empty. I decline
on sofas and chaises--
longues, hollow with age
and boredom like a skin
shedding its snake.

These days I'm harmless, and my memory
crusts over like my sight. But he's still sharp,
his nose too long, his accent crude, his stink
of the sea. The only one I really wanted.
He saw me as I was, as Daddy made me,
as Daddy had been making me for years.

I heard someone name 'Tyre' the other day.
There were drums and fanfares, so I wondered,
was it him? Had he escaped my father's rage
and come in his nineties to visit me and gloat
with some ex-beauty tottering on his arm?
I must have wished it. A relief from other thoughts.

Even to the most, let's say, adoring fathers
daughters lose their glow, and since I had a sister
Daddy farmed me out once she had reached
the age he liked. Some 'farm' -- this dusty nowhere,
a decrepit king who couldn't till my bed.
Which satisfied Daddy. What was my fertility to him?

The story goes that I was burned up too
when fire bombed from the sky to punish him.
The woman sitting by his side, like him
reduced to charcoal, was my sister. Daddy
taught me flesh is foul. Correction. Showed.
Correction. All the space there might have been

in me for love, hunger, or
tenderness was filled with him.
Poisons are subtle here,
blades fine, plagues frequent.
I forget which nephew's
nephew grabbed the throne
last time the music stopped.


Second Place
The Daughter of Antiochus
by Adam Elgar
Writer's Block

"This is a dramatic monologue, a difficult form that requires restraint - otherwise the tone of voice and the character collapses. Here the tone of well preserved and we get a real sense of the woman's bitterness and disappointment. There are several wonderful effects - 'like a skin/shedding its snake' and I lie the 'ex-beauty tottering on his arm'." --Bryan Appleyard


Jackie

by Kathy Earsman
Mosaic Musings

That little fellow, Jack, can hardly wait
to walk with us to school; he'll soon be five.
Each day he waits alone, "See ya!" he says
and waves, he lifts his brows and tilts his head
in Polynesian style. He's just so sweet!

Jackie little Jackie-down-the-street.

The men are in the river side by side,
their bodies bright with sparkles as they wade
a long slow march, the ripples dance and shine,
and no-one speaks... I watch the shadows grow
until they reach like fingers that would hide

down inside the river by the pipe.

There's an awful cry, the postman stoops
and snatches, boiling up the water where
a child comes swinging out in fountain gouts
that stream in rivers down his little arms
spread out like Jesus' arms upon the cross.

Jackie, little Jackie-down-the-street.

Then suddenly the air is full of sound;
the women on the bridge let out a wail
that's crying on and on and I can see
the shape of it go spreading like a stain,
I see it beating like a wounded gull
flying up the river past the pipe.

Now Jackie's on the claypan by the bank,
his father sucks his mouth and spits a flood.
We stand and watch him press on Jackie's chest
and darkness grows around, we breathe the cold,
but Jackie doesn't breathe, he doesn't move.

Jackie little Jackie-down-the-street.

Doc Tommo's car spins arcing in a skid;
he runs and kneels, he fingers Jackie's throat
and looks into his eyes. "It's way too late,"
the Doctor says, "Give up, it's over Sid,
give up I said ! He's dead! He's bloody dead!"

Jackie little Jackie-down-the-street.

His father picks him up in his big arms
and holds him close against him wordlessly.
We watch him trudging slowly up the hill
and Jackie's mother follows heavily,
and everything is still now as I sit

down above the river on the pipe
where Jackie fell and hit his head. He sank.
But no-one said a thing. They ran away
because they got a fright. Oh how I wish
we never took him with us after school
to fish, and play the way he did today

half across the river on the pipe.




Third Place
Jackie
by Kathy Earsman
Mosaic Musings

"Normally I'm allergic to this kind of crisis/reportage poetry, but I know this is my failing. In this case, the narrative is well handled and the tension and horror build inexorably. The danger with this kind of subject matter is that it can turn into just a kind of scream. Much more effective is to contain the feeling within the structure of the poem, exactly what the poet achieves here." --Bryan Appleyard



~Honorable Mentions~




Rhythmically Inapposite
by Michael McRandall
Pen Shells


Lana rides a pony in the
cellar
unmindful of the children
who dance circles at the
door --
she wonders if the apathy
is terminal,
or merely, chronic,
but decides it doesn't matter
since the colors fade
regardless of the
song.

Neighbors stand in line to borrow
vapors
which serve to cover shadows
that have melted on the
floor --
plant roses in her window-box
and water them with undiluted
inference,
Then watch through shuttered
windows
as she finger-paints a
mourning on the
sky.

Lana makes an early trip to
vacant --
where every mother Mary
emulates their father's
whore --
and withers at the
elementary portrait that is
drowning in the rearview,
as crack-pipes play
a reverential etude to a
fractured morning
buzz.


Rapunzel at 49 Learns to Dance the Tarantella
by Laurie Byro
Desert Moon Review

Because she was awkward,
the opposite of a spun-sugar baby, a black
widow in his glittering
web, because
she never understood about Dylan
and Baez and how she stood out like the purple eye
in the delicacy of his Queen Anne's Lace
chords, he the pearl shell, the mother
of the luminous lake pearl
and because she thought his book was Tarantella,
never ever understood-

pushed up against it like a train heading
into snowy Hibbing with those Russian wolves
howling outside her window
and she breathing the blast
of coal smoke and exhaling strings
of sweet gas, the floss of cotton candy,
she rubs against his arm like a spotting
cat, noticing the dark whorls of hair, the eight-legged
slip into tyranny.

Her taut, tight controlled body
just the way he likes it, zippered inside
itself, a dance towards his white light, a six pointed
star, not cocaine white or holy but because
he was the teacher and she the pupil
and because she slips inside
his skin, minds the illumination
of his ghost preacher
in and out and in
and out and through his incarnations
and because
her skin has begun to peel, to shed off
into a pile of sawdust
he blows her onto the floor where she becomes
the grit under all the fancy soles.


56 and Sunny
by Mitchell Geller
About Poetry Forum

I concentrated far too much on death,
and somehow missed the violet and the crocus,
and sharp green shoots that sucked the sun like breath.
I concentrated far too much on death;
ignored the rose, or some such shibboleth --
let pure, prismatic joy escape my focus.
I concentrated far too much on death,
and somehow missed the violet and the crocus.


Songs from Stephen King's Knapsack III: Insomnia
by Gary Blankenship
Blue Line

Trees don't sleep, although some sit up in bed
and pretend. They might even nod off
for a cat-nap, but you never catch them
in the depths of REM sleep where dreams come from.

Some undress preferring to spend the long night
nude, nothing between them and the damp fog
but some ragged shreds of moss and lichen.
Others stay clothed as they watch the moon change

from sickle to an old man eye winking.
Come day, they yawn and nests fall from great heights.