IBPC Poem of the year, May 2008 - April 2009, Congratulations Poets! Sweep by Desert Moon Review Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

POEM OF THE YEAR
May 2008-April 2009
Judged by
Xeufei Jin



Poem of the Year
A Fall from Grace
by S. Thomas Summers
Submitted by Desert Moon Review

Second Place
Living in the Body of a Firefly
by Laurie Byro
Submitted by Desert Moon Review

Third Place
Virginia Sings Back To the Stones In Her Pockets
by Laurie Byro
Submitted by Desert Moon Review

Judges Comments and Winning Poems

Poem of the Year
A Fall from Grace

The poem is marked with clarity and concreteness. The lines gleam on the page. The child is troubled by death, which is embodied by the fish the grandfather is cleaning, but the child doesn't know how to frame the question precisely for the old man. As a result, the grandfather's answer remains ambiguous, but amazingly it is also right. The ending is full of beauty and ambiguity. --Xeufei Jin


A Fall from Grace
by S. Thomas Summers
Desert Moon Review
June 2008


Grandpa scales the fish before
he removes its head or slices
a thin line up its belly, spilling

blood and water. He lodges
his thumb deep in its throat,
between gills — clenches

his fist around the skull.
Jagged tool, a spoon with teeth,
tears shimmer from flesh:

a rainbow ripped from the soft
air that lingers after morning storms.
The tail curls toward the sun. Lidless

eyes, still moist, leak disbelief.
This is death. Gills flare like butterflies
fanning purple wings. I ask

if it hurts. Grandpa says
Little bit, just a little bit.



Second Place
Living in the Body of a Firefly

A very imaginative poem. Though personification is a trite device, this poem manages to become intimate, dramatic, and wise. –Xeufei Jin


Living in the Body of a Firefly
by Laurie Byro
Desert Moon Review
August 2008


Cotton mouthed, hung over, I wake up in my sooty dress
somehow ashamed to be seen in the utter waste

of daylight. The barbecue with all those mint juleps
on the verandah was intense but I strayed too long on the edge

of a glass. I long for a quiet train trestle, wood and paint
chipping off, not those city lights where I am one of millions.

I’m not fooled by the low murmurings of the river,
cattails to luxuriate in, but danger in the deep-throated

baritone of frogs. Damselflies are entirely self-involved
and bossy, known to eat out of their own behinds. Never mind,

there’s safety in numbers. A neighbor has an easy split
in a porch screen and as I’m on a tear of wild nights

before I die, I’ve set my sights on their cathedral ceiling.
In the sway of tall grasses his youngest cups her hands

around me to pray. I am coveted in the moist chapel of fingers.
Tonight, I’ll hang around until they are all half lidded-drowsy.

I’ll skitter down to her favorite blanket where she’ll wish
upon me like I am the last star falling, the last creature on earth.



Third Place
Virginia Sings Back To the Stones In Her Pockets

A poem set in a painting of natural/domestic surroundings. The speaker as a painter describes the process of creating art. Stones are presented as a natural element, like soil, that connects both the living and the dead and binds them to a place. The tone of voice, charged with music and feeling, celebrates this unity. --Xeufei Jin


Virginia Sings Back To the Stones In Her Pockets
by Laurie Byro
Desert Moon Review
February 2009



I must get the details right. How stones warbled
to her from the garden for a fortnight or so. Troublesome,
intrusive, they trilled while she weeded anemones. Beneath
the ease of roots and thrust of new growth, they ingratiated

themselves to her prodding callused fingers. They knew
her sister was the lucky one, the one who skimmed flat-brimmed
lake stones with the children. This one lay on the couch
with her eyelids peeled back, mushroom capped stones rattling

in the crèche of her eye sockets. Stones were faithful
as vowels; they didn’t let her down. Night after night,
her husband begged her to push them back into the gully of silence.
Last night, she overturned another patch of fertile earth, brushing

off the smooth and round. She pictures the summer table noisy
with anemones and her sister’s brood. She is washed out, a little
brown thrush. “Drab hen, frump” her sister will urge her to over
come the day’s exacting brushes. I must get the colors right,

melt down her charms to the bare-bone mauves and ochre.
The stones will do their job shortly. Aggressive reds need to be
given back to the soil—to the bridegroom river. We must empty
out all the flecked mica chips from her pockets, the cloth’s blood
stained lullabies, the stones last sweet songs.



THE JUDGE:

Xeufei Jin (Ha Jin) grew up in mainland China and came to the United States in 1985 to do graduate work at Brandeis University. In 1990 he began to write in English exclusively. To date, he has published three volumes of poetry, Between Silences (1990), Facing Shadows (1996), and Wreckage (2001); and three books of short fiction, Ocean of Words (1996), which received the PEN/Hemingway Award; Under the Red Flag (1997), which received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and The Bridegroom (2000), which received The Asian American Literary Award (2001) and the Townsend Fiction Prize (2002). He has also written five novels: In the Pond (1998); Waiting (1999), which received the National Book Award (1999) and the PEN/Faulkner Award (2004), The Crazed (2002), War Trash (2004), the PEN/Faulkner Award (2005), A Free Life (2007), and a book of essays, The Writer as Migrant (2008). His collection of short stories, A Good Fall, will be published in November 2009. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.

Currently he is a professor of English at Boston University and lives in the Boston area.