|
|
|
IBPC Winning Poems, 2010, Congratulations Poets! |
|
|
|
Jan 26 10, 18:38
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place Eureka Springs by Jude Goodwin The WatersNow 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 LauxSecond Place Snow by Judy Swann The WatersIt 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 LauxHonorable Mentions
Wig by Michael Harty Wild Poetry ForumShe 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.orgI 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 ShellsThe 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.
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Mar 1 10, 18:45
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place What by Jude Goodwin The Watersif each of the world’s 6 billion people wrote one poem today on a single folded sheet and stapled it each to the other’s, end to end. The paper chain would reach around the world twenty-one thousand times. Earth, the tenement, with six billion poems flapping like bedsheets in the air above our streets, some blood marked, some greyed by the smoke from our frankfurter stands, most white like belly feathers and we all have to look up. Is it time to cut the poetry loose? The news papers cry and the people pull out their scissors. The poems launch themselves upward, it takes only half of them to link humanity to the moon, the rest carry on past,. We watch with our telescopes and iPhones until they are gone. Well that’s that then isn’t it ? the poets of the world might say. They’ve known all along, about the numbers -We hear this kind of calculation used everywhere today: If you lined up all the polystyrene foam cups made in just one day, they would circle the earth. If all the glass bottles and jars collected through recycling in the U.S. in 1994 were laid end to end, they'd reach the moon and half way back to earth. Every day, Americans use enough steel and tin cans to make a steel pipe running from Los Angeles to New York and back again. (Not a bad idea, if you put a bullet train in that pipe.) This poem uses the same conceit, but for poetic purposes, making a paper chain of poems strung like a clothesline above the tenement of the earth. It's a poem about poetry, but also about humanity and art, struck through with humor, and ending with a nod to reality. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne LauxSecond Place A Question of Nakedness by Melanie Firth Wild Poetry Forumfragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. - Anais Nin
Nips, lips and a chasm of whiteness. A mark they call ‘birth’. Imperfection that wants to love itself. All that stand-alone. The great crowding physicality. How flesh recalls action, but scars over the cost. The questions flesh fold on, give rise to. Do I turn you on? Turn on you? Hurt when I press here. Here? The thigh’s mole, will it answer to melanoma, to Melanie?
How SP30+ became a process of affection, cotton sucking on a figurative field of follicles and sweat. The occasional horror of a deep metaphorical wound or otherwise and the smug nature of paper cuts. Beauty versus scars. Natural regeneration v.s. stocking-up on anti-aging products.
All the recesses I fear and my inability to say ‘hole’ around your arousal. Pinkness and rawness (that relationship). The take-it-in-your-stride concept of disposal, birth and of f—ing. The body’s gumption. How it breaks on time, indulgence and self-harm. The egging-on of the virile seed.
Regret for the wounded animal who leaves me bloodless, but fools me into power. The lack of cushioning on shoulder blade, knee and elbow fixtures. The exasperation of a slow scab and the fruitless study of palms. The distrustfulness of wrists.
How I cannot really slander or comprehend my nakedness at all.We liked this poem for its generosity to the aging body in all its guises, its scars and scabs and folds, its furrows and deadly moles. We also like the innovative use of language and syntax: "The body's gumption. How it breaks/ on time, indulgence and self-harm./The egging-on of the virile seed." --Joseph Millar & Dorianne LauxThird Place Absence of Detail by Debbie Calverley criticalpoet.orgToday there is nothing to write serious or otherwise, the wind blows. Ridiculous to sublime the snow falls scoops of vanilla ice without the cream. Around the room’s throat, dark hands of night close, while candles wax their poetics onto tabletops, the cat’s silhouette looms in the hallway her tail a taper, the colour of flame.
The round of moon reminds me of a shape his head cradled against a black cushion - Tonight there is nothing to write.This poem moves from image to image, from scoops of ice cream to the dark hands of night, from the flame of a cat's tail to a surprising use of that old standby, the moon. Also a poem about poetry, it becomes a poem in spite of the poet's most common complaint. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne LauxHonorable Mentions
Ars Poetica #7 by Tim Blighton Desert Moon ReviewThe unraveling is slow: under red cellophane, black birds weave around themselves; punctuation strung together without words; the patterns
dissolve into street lamps and bug zappers, stuttering and angry ghosts trapped in their own vaults. Dusk,
a deep sealing breath, brings a bouquet of bubbles, stars and debris to the surface. Because, poetry is any quiet night
translated by those who have only hammers and bells: every firefly strung through the dandelion seed like fallen Christmas lights; every sparrow dissolved
into a bat, like a bicycler signaling; every cicada returning from the industry of mating to lay its labor inside thinly-cut wood: over
and over, the batches will nestle in the ink of sleep, until years later—after each creator is consumed, perhaps, by a bird made flesh from the night—small
tunnels will burst open, nymphs rise out, crawl into undergrowth whose roots they’ve fed upon for years, and molt into song.O be Joyful by Judy Swann The WatersThat July, rectangular, he crept backwards. He loved the mats of purslane on August earth, where he lay his face,
and Nikka, the German Shepard, not mutual, and by December with tin ear, burbled to the gamelon.
At three, suddenly verbal, he claimed to love me 92 olds and 47 pounds. I love you he said, 32 - 14 - 7 hours.
He loved my eye and my other eye, loved his father’s lymphoma’s nodes, kissed them and said, Now we’re set.
I taught him to say Je t’adore, which he pronounced “Such a Joe.” Don’t go, he told me, Such a Joe, Mother.Triolet on a Line by Billy Collins by Antonia Clark The WatersHow feeble our vocabulary in the face of death. – from “The First Night”
How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death. How wordlessly we tremble or embrace the thought of it, knowing we will give up breath, language, selfhood in the face of death. And, even then, I won’t pretend that faith will save us. This life is all we know of grace. How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death How wordlessly we tremble or embrace.
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Mar 28 10, 20:00
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place Eden in Winter by Russel Smith The Write IdeaIn a downtown park I find a marble Eve with broken hands and feet lying awake by a sleeping man, where he had carried her.
Unconscious, still he keeps her among the frost-bit weeds, a crippled captive to oversee his wretchedness.
New life sings in the branches, rattles the clinging leaves, chases the hard snow crunching sweet as halvah, beneath my feet.
Each lengthening day the sun climbs higher over us. I circle here; I listen to her muted voice.
She tells me we are naked, lacking even skins of animals, and having eaten of the tree of life, we could live forever.We are enamored of the city scene drawn here, the homeless man and his marble Eve, the "frost-bit weeds". The idea that these difficult surroundings can be somehow Edenesque. A mysterious poem that harkens back to the garden where all is naked and broken. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne LauxSecond Place nettles riff nettles the big tree by Steve Parker criticalpoet.orgthere at the confluence of radiators the boy sings
I knew you when you were small you remember back in the old days a father from outside swinging a man with a glider who said now then
now then what? someone they said did homosex stuff in a cinema after chopping nettles all day this was a betrayal of his wife/mother all day this was a betrayal
the boy was in bed with biscuits a torch the cold the deep cold
by the age of eight I was inured to cold I can take cold like I can take rejection warmth I see as too much frivolous politics
ancestral shame I can’t help your Grandfather who in a laudanum frenzy maybe it is not right to speak of the favourite goat whose spirit appeared over and over in the guise of a maiden always at dusk clutching a glass of chartreuse asking in chitin
to be served in the hemispherical bread oven where the bones were found behind the wall broken
later his girlfriends found these discoveries challenging uh uh uh uh uh she would say from her book he held so avid at night beneath the blankets in the torchlight uh uh uh uh uh he would say back in English Naval umaphore
tomorrow both of them scything nettles in the old garden at each other scarcely lookingA fractured narrative wherein the reader is moved through a series of arresting images, back towards an “ancestral shame”. The poem skips its frenetic way through politics and sex and memory, using a range of voices, all of them tied together through the starkly powerful scything of nettles." --Joseph Millar & Dorianne LauxThird Place Everything will be permitted, nothing will be desired by Laura Ring Wild Poetry ForumWe abandoned our bodies not long after the millennium. Even the memory was hateful at first — wet, crabwise things,
animalcules in a giant jizz wad rushing to fertilize the Great Mother. Absurd lips, genitals, rounded skulls like the dumb heads of sperm.
Reproduction a horror of chance, like reaching blind into a grab bag for gametes. We had cures for everything: cancer,
heart disease. We lived too long, witnessed the recalculation of risk. Watched the ordinary – cotton, moonlight — turn deadly. There were so many ways to die. In time
our absent bodies grew benign, the way vanished things become lovable. Laudanum. Castor oil. We shake
our heads at the big-head bipeds that wander our history like hi-wheels and wagons; tote their leaks and swellings in the hapless past.
A mere century makes of our bodies a Golden Age. We doubt the measure of our bloodless geometry, press the old timers for stories of flesh:
They say our fingers made trails in the water; and the pizza cheese burned our mouths. They say sometimes our bare legs would stick to the back seats of cars.This poem’s finely drawn map of the "bloodless" future makes us especially appreciate the last three lines that bring us back to the present, back into our living bodies: fingers, mouths, legs. --Joseph Millar & Dorianne LauxHonorable Mentions
Lot by Richard Moorhead Wild Poetry ForumI. Bible Story
Someone’s wife, no - husband, dreaming of a soup to dip the spouse in. The years taste like her or cream of artichoke with a little lick of sin.
II. Readied for Sale
How casually you sell my mistakes to recipients of saleable complaints, tie an off-white luggage tag to my big toe, ready me for auction. I despise that
but I love the thickness of the paper and the tag’s hole protector - a sticker like a polo mint. I love its old fashionedness.
III. That’s your lot
It’s not what you have, but the end of what you have. It is not who you are, but the end of who you are. I am reluctant
to accept it, like the moment when you move house. Close the last door on an emptied room,
register disgust and marvel at the dust surrounding where the frames of pictures lingered with indifference.
You should move, but then you’d start to build your lot again.The First Cut by Lana Wiltshire Campbell Blueline Poetrythe tree surgeon came today at noon
made quesadillas on the sidewalk chanted accolades to the spore geist
the old ash kept silent waiting for the first incision the plum cried tiny flowersComfort by Cynthia Neely The WatersThe sheets were pristine, so clean. Wait, go back The air so clean yes the air like a baby’s breaching breath no,
wait. Back further.
Before my pen described a needle.
Still, before a needle stilled your life. And Mother needed not to cradle me or beg me
to remember floating on the bay. Before the needle sought its target, through belly swell, in amniotic sea.
Stop, wait,
further.
Before your father shaved my head. Before the wigs I didn’t like. Before I shopped for scarves instead.
No No No. Before the drip drip drip,
the cysplat poisoned veins discreetly positioned pans the vague white-coated comfort: You can always have another…
Before the errant cell Before I would tell them I chose me over you.
Yes, further, further
Before, before, when air was clean, when I was clean, and wings were filled, and you still floated on your own private bay.
Before I balanced on reflection’s edge, and lay quiet on such pristine sheets with stirruped feet.
Before I harbored sparrows in my breast and could not speak for fear of losing those that fluttered darkly to escape.Song for the Ghost of Gabriel Gomez by Emily Brink The Writers Block*about a classmate who died young
Your family buried you in your uniform, white and navy. I heard you grew wings in the grave and escaped in a lowrider.
You are closer to God than I. So tell me does he whisper in your ear, exactly where St. Lucy left her famous eyes?
You are descending into the crater of a volcano to resurrect Aztec virgins, you are watching over the young mothers crossing the Senora into the United States.
When you died an alcoholic priest wrote your elegy with trembling hands— Your brother, pockets full of heroin needles, was ashamed it wasn’t him who died.
And here I am, in the pitch of St. Raymond’s, surprised by tears. It has been so long since I knelt for anything.
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Jun 27 10, 06:39
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
Note: Sorry for the late posting - I had thought this was posted last month, just before we had a power outage - it must not have saved then...First Place Here With You by Laurel K. Dodge The Writer's BlockUnlike the beloved dog, the dead father is not buried in the backyard; the backyard where the beloved dead dog buried tooth-ruined soup bones and remnants of rabbits. What comes undone, what comes un-sewn, can be pieced or stitched back together; but you know it is never whole. A hole is a hole is a hole. Whether filled with the embalmed remains of a grandmother or the stiff body of a dog rescued from the pound, wrapped tenderly in a raggedy blanket you had no use for anymore. You thought you had no use for mourning. You packed your grief in a suitcase and stuffed it deep in a closet. Years later, now, on this unremarkable day in February, you discover the phantom luggage. Unzipped, the contents fall out like so much viscera, strange and almost unidentifiable: Stones from the ocean, chalky seashells, antlers of driftwood. And just like that, loss comes back to you strong, as sweet and sorrowful, as wet and cold as your beloved dead dog’s nose pressed into your hand, not asking, not begging, just asserting what you forgot, yet always knew: I am here with you.This remarkable poem encapsulates itself – and the loss which is its theme. It does this partly through repetition, which is used throughout. Even the first three lines have “the beloved dog... the beloved / dead dog”, which becomes “the stiff body of a dog” and returns to the “beloved dead dog’s nose”. It also does it by starting with a parting of the ways – “Unlike the beloved dog, the dead father…” and closing with a re/unification “I am here with you”. And it also does it through the complete conviction at level of diction and in the way one idea builds upon the previous one, to make an absolutely necessary whole. Quietly, in passing, the poem gives us a great deal of detail (“wrapped tenderly in a raggedy blanket you had no use / for anymore”) and several separate bereavements (there is also “a grandmother”). Yet the way grief accumulates, and its odd connective logic, is shown not told. A moving, beautiful poem. --Fiona SampsonSecond Place Ouija by Lois P. Jones Pen ShellsGreen sunflowers trembled in the highlands of dusk and the whole cemetery began to complain with cardboard mouths and dry rags.” –Federico Garcia Lorca
You asked for an R, for the ripening of olives in your garden, the red-tailed hawk
angling over the road, the path that took you down and away
from the empty room of the body. The R of reasons, of the ringing that breaks
in a yellow bell tower – the only sound after the round of shots that shattered
an afternoon. And the T can only be more time, time to be the clock or the weather vane,
the twilight through your windows on the page, your pen once again plow
and the places you took me where I abandoned faith.
A is alone, how you never wanted it, preferring the company of bishop’s
weed and drowsy horses—the warm trace of the lily and a flame
for the night with its black mouth that sings your saeta.
G is the ghost bird that hovered at Fuente Grande that you did not wish
to come, for the grave some say you dug with your own hands,
empty as a mouth full of snow, as a sky that held no moon that night
only its pure shape to stow all the names of the dead.The apparent randomness of the four letters (R, T, A and G) this poem’s visitant picks on the Ouija board makes this seem like a poem “which really happened”; but this doesn’t, for once, weaken a poem whose confident trajectory is concerned with cleverly and evocatively re-telling the story of Lorca’s murder – but telling it not only “slant” but in Lorca-esque terms. A difficult feat, and especially hard to avoid this sounding mannered, but you manage beautifully. Some killer phrases – “the empty room of the body” – though I might have replaced the epigraph with a “for” or “i.m.” and would have fiddled with the grammar of “A is alone, how you never wanted it” – maybe “that”? – which I think you worry too much about matching to “green, how much you wanted it”. Especially given that the famous opening of that Lorca poem is a translation, in English versions! --Fiona SampsonThird Place Caring For Your Gimp by Henry Shifrin Wild Poetry ForumFold your Gimp along his creases. The hemline created by his smiles. He can beam, an ornament of sorts, in front of a window for hours. The passersby may not be happy. See the pale cheek. But no lip stays straight
when it confronts such an endless smile. As you fold him, powder the skin a gentle lavender. Make sure to clean away any chance for mildew or mold, things that ruin a complexion and often cause a terrible stench.
Brush the hairs, all the hairs, even those on his back, straight. Leave the folded man on a chair beside the door. He will be ready for a car ride, a flicker of television, a kiss on the ear. And later you can unfold him and
scrub the skin stretched across his belly to shine like a just-washed sedan. In the evening, if you have folded him into a small square, place him snug among mothballs, where nothing will bite or nick his skin.This is witty, of course, and in just those deft ways – using unobvious details – which sustain the joke: “powder the skin a gentle / lavender”, “leave the folded man / on a chair by the door”. The fantasy is inhabited, in other words, rather than being simply an idea schematically explicated. Moreover, the quality of the image-writing is fluent (“scrub the skin stretched across his belly / to shine like a just-washed sedan”), and this is rhythmic, well-articulated writing: see the rhythmic repetition of “Brush the hairs, all the hairs, even those / on his back”. Many entries were more serious and complex than this poem, but they lost out to it through being either unfinished or having a tonal problem (or excessive sincerity or sweetness). Idealism is the greatest of virtues – but belongs beyond the poem itself, I suspect. --Fiona SampsonHighly Commended
My Neighbor, Only a Name On a Mailbox by Bernard Henrie The WatersMargaret Yamasaki dyed her hair seaweed color. In the right light and a few miles an hour of wind she appears to swim toward me, to come landward, a water postman, eerie mop of hair waving in semaphore code.
I imagine sea water beaded in her eyelashes as she effortlessly swims the Pacific breakers.
Later, she leaves the beach and turns to look at an old man, a silver porpoise almost metallic with a backstroke.
At that distance she cannot see my smile or that I am busy at invisible controls, a pilot in a cockpit I hope to avert any disaster she might encounter and to fix all bets for happiness in her favor.Highly commended for a great image – “In the right light and a few miles an hour of wind / she appears to swim towards me” – and for the interesting idea, in the last stanza, that the observer is at the controls. --Fiona SampsonQueen of the Road by Alice Folkart Blueline PoetryLady long-haul trucker, mistress of power and speed, regal queen of the miles. smiles of the double yellow line, the long, scary tunnel that curves right in the middle.
Can’t play the fiddle, but I’m a long-haul trucker carrying the weight of the world on my back, car parts, pig parts, big carts for supermarts, whatever they weigh, I start my day with a cup of joe, and I know
that the miles will roll with me or without me but I’d better go and see the world - I love the gears eighteen right here, near my hand and up the road there is a band
I want to hear. Nearly every stop there is a cop or some guy with a beady eye says, “Hey, babe, you too cute and small to haul that big old truck!” and his eyes cluck shut cause of the rhyme of that word.
But I heard him, what he thought, my mama taught me to translate what’s in men’s heads, and not to date, late or early any guy whose name is Curley, but to get out on the road where it’s safe, just deliver my load.Highly commended because it’s a great folk poem – could be the lyrics of a C&W song – and for the line “and his eyes cluck / shut cause of the rhyme of that word” truck. --Fiona Sampson’serPina biNary by Carmela Cohen conjunction barely rains, rarely, but for the morning residue of grapes. wine chased down by apple gait by dappled tannin bombs replacing the very sour hours. delinquent hours. bald refrain of arpeggio pain replete with teething, antecedent shame and windows, windows plagued by gaping thoughts of trains, derailed weather vanes span the mottled stretchers. here the masters cluster disapproving stares shuffle whispers; the glaring difference in years. here the gilt ridden host of clear coasts begins to burn cinnamon, the toast. fenestration for opportunity’s sake. the spurof the prosperous moment casts aspersions aside while focusing on desire’s bloodshot eye. tell me, tell me obliquely, about getting laid off feeling infinitely screwed, used. maturity's security. making do with defense mechanism’s helium cocoon. mulling over- heard mentalities in the corral of modality. baby baby. me metatarsenal. smash. come from hind baal bush, shellack. i grow down goose-bound. mustachioed splashed brackish kitsch koosh? to waste away dusty, douche without tasting touching tipsy lip to lip, pipslip hip to big dipper shlook your butterfly zipped a smidgeon a smudge of vulnerability. tish toosh splishplash of eyelash, chance come prance, compress. stress test love. my flower. bed. Highly commended or its elegant shape (among shaped concrete poems); for its successful accumulation of thoughts, tropes and things from small-town anomie; and for its incidental wit – “fenestration / for opportunity’s sake”. --Fiona SampsonTetelestai by Michael Virga The Writers BlockIt has been polished off completely
by the greatest of artists:
“Mother, see how I make all things new again.”
The last time like the first
the first not unlike the last.
Drifted in on wood (infant imprint in the hay) stayed with the wood working it for sustenance (the name “Jesus of Nazareth” & the date carved in the lid of an oaken chest) then sustained the wood a larger-than-life easel displayed the abstracted remains.
The unveiling reveals it is without a doubt a commission perfectedly accomplished in full.
See now how He renders the tomb vacant as the manger. His way with light makes the definition of space
no longer an open & closed form framed as drafted bookendings to encompass the stories bound from flesh into stone.
It is the tree that is finished from the root up.Highly commended for its lineation which perfectly catches a certain speech-rhythm; and for the clean, contemporary diction with which it re-articulates, in a totally fresh way, Christian mysticism. --Fiona SampsonToday at the Ranch by Steve Meador FreeWrights Peer ReviewWhat is it inside the imagination that keeps surprising us –Charles Wright
9:00 am
I have found a shovel. The handle is broken, there is a small crack in its throat. But it is still good in structure and could be repaired for use in your garden or your yard. Perhaps it could scoop fallen leaves of magnificent color, or snow bland beyond all description. Who wants this shovel someone pitched from a car or truck, into my pasture, where the cows eye it with fear and wild animals smell the danger of man. Who would like to take this shovel, make it whole and usable again?
Noon
Who will buy this goat with a face like a sage and a mellow voice that beckons the early evening? Will someone take this fine animal and let her see what lies beyond the wire fence that butts tightly against the wood water trough? She is only familiar with the ground in a pen found at the southeastern corner of the northern half of a section of land. She is most ignorant of wars and the actions of politicians eager to make her life better. She merely seeks to be a goat free of bondage.
3:00 pm
A rusty scythe crusted with more than forty years of chaff and dust is this day recovered from beneath the rubble of a collapsing tin shed. Its corroded blade once sliced through ripe grain used to make the bread which fed the family. Then out of the ground or down from the sky its sharp inner curve came cloaked in silence to reap the gift of God. It became the symbol of all things non grata. Accept this implement, for past indiscretions often are by the hands of others, not ourselves.Highly commended for the trope of giving each stanza a time as well as a place – which [i]locates us very successfully. And for the attention to nearly-regular stresses per line when the temptation in this kind of poem is to go for touchy-feely free verse.[/i] --Fiona SampsonDaily Thought by Kay Vibbert FreeWrights Peer ReviewI’ve never seen half a rain, never held the whole of it. From a ladderback chair the color of manna, the rain smells of vanilla. Ducks come together like black spoons against the brown skin of clouds. A sheet of paper across my lap reminds me of the white blouses worn in grade school. Mother waited until the buttons were loose as weathered pinwheels to sew them back on again before summer. That last long summer, how it slipped across my shoulders.Highly commended for a charming surrealism, even though I’m not convinced it’s completely controlled; and for fine imagistic associations of ideas: ducks “like black spoons”, “that last long summer, / how it slipped across my shoulders” as the conclusion to a sowing poem. --Fiona Sampson
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Jul 26 10, 07:35
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place Somewhere the Sun Is Shining by R. L. Crowther conjunctionHeat only half-warmed by the furnace coals reluctantly slipped through the open grate to an upper floor, sun-up hours away; a twelve-year-old’s sense of duty only puts off, but can’t avoid the grappling cold. Too soon the triple-layers of sweat shirt replace the double-layers of blanket and, dark or not, cold as it is, he goes. Save for the milk truck and all-night diner, LaGrange lay in the contests of winter, unwilling to leave the heat of the homes, as was the boy only minutes before. The dog up the street hears the unquiet quiet of bicycle chain and wheel-bounce off the frozen bricks of the road. Light shines through the laundromat window as a sun, sprouting bundles of newspapers outside, culled like daily harvests of winter wheat as if all weeks were the month of July.
Inexorably, the news is slipping East, past Cold War Europe, into Vietnam, into Laos, into Cambodia; the revulsion of self-immolation has only just invaded the front page; no one here understands their frustrations… yet. Inside the laundromat, the papers are folded and wrapped while the juke box blares… Well, everybody’s heard…about the Bird. Ba- ba- ba- Bird, Bird, Bird…Bir- Bird’s the word… Lady Bird leads the charge to clean up road- side junk yards while the Great Society staggers its way out of Washington to waiting arms of Hoosiers everywhere. A miniature flock of Paul Reveres pedals off to spread the news fit to print: (Plop)The Russians are coming, says one porch; (Thump) God is Dead it says behind a door.
In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes—just as long as it takes to grab the papers and bolt down a hot chocolate and two donuts.This is a highly-contemporary use of blank verse (at base): the form lends it authority and “measure”. I like the way it moves between present and past tenses, so that we feel it’s being told both then and now (and indeed it is a poem about another zeit’s geist); both in the 12 year old’s bedroom and LaGrange’s bed. The result’s a sense of multiplicity and community: of things on all sides. A very fine evocation, done with the lightest of unschematic touches. --Fiona SampsonSecond Place A Woman's Fetish by Lise Whidden criticalpoet.orgI’ll only live with men who don’t know me, men who are so confused by my language that when I speak their facial expressions remind me of visitors at my Grandmother’s church when someone rose to speak in an unknown tongue.
I’ll only cook for men who kill doves on opening day in sunflower fields, smile in pictures with fish they’ve caught from oceans, men who know all the words to a hymn their mother hummed while hanging wash.
I’ll only sleep with men who whisper short sentenced stories after lovemaking, tales of wars, foolish summers and women who left, men who drive Mustangs after drinking a fifth of Wild Turkey.
I’ll only wash men’s clothes when they forget beer bottle caps, phone numbers scrawled on paper scraps in their pockets, undress leaving denim turned inside out, throw change pocketknives and bullets into a china cup on my dresser.
I’ll only listen to deep voiced men who call me names spelled out in sugar they spill on a kitchen countertop after opening the bag, men who think long stemmed roses make it all better, but don’t know geraniums will grow in any soil.This is a delightfully unexpected poem. Though it takes the risk of being a one-idea piece, each strand of that idea is freshly realized and genuinely inventive. There’s a deft persona, but not a strenuous attenpt at “voice”. It’s a poem led by poetics – by the imperatives of form. And it’s funny because it’s inventive. A rare feat, it’s a winner because it’s so completely achieved. --Fiona SampsonThird Place After Baltimore by Ron Lavalette The Waters(for fredda)
Sometimes there was wine at night but there was never any money. I don’t remember much but coffee, hash on the roof at midnight and one time drunk on Harry’s street dancing in the rain. We pasted up the underground news. They paid us with rolling papers, incense, sacks of welfare rice.
What became of you after that, after Janicelli’s peyote wedding and our own sad abortive love affair, my sudden disappearance?
You looked well some years ago -it was February, I think- and you still look good to me now occasionally though I must admit it here: I can’t always recall your face.A subtle account of both a time and place and of a psyche, this poem grows and grows. The quiet, perfectly-managed diction isn’t ready-made, it’s highly-crafted even though it slips down so easily (note that “Sometimes there was… but there was never”). It gets more and more interesting – a fine crescendo – as we discover, in the first stanza, that these are people working for an underground movement; that there’s a sketched-in emotional history which would fuel a whole movie (2nd stanza) and then through the fascinating play and double-turn of the last stanza. This is a poem which tells everything (we are never fobbed off with vagueness or uncertainty), but without letting on that it’s telling… --Fiona SampsonHighly Commended
Blood on Draft Files, Baltimore, 1967
by Christopher T. George FreeWright's Peer ReviewFor Dave Eberhardt
The so-red-blood did its job: soldier-blood, student-blood, verily, the blood of Jesus.
In reality, you poured duck-blood on the files in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
(enough for the powers to take notice and act).
An event from another era, a generation ago, a crime for which you served 2 years in jail;
Phil Berrigan, a Josephite priest doing God’s work, received six years in jail for his misdemeanor
(the powers had seen, and they had reacted).
I recall how in a poem you roasted quail on a jail radiator; now, you work with inmates downtown.
Would I have had the courage to get blood on my hands? At Christmas, we get together with you and Cathy, enjoy
salmon, a bloodless fish. You are aged sixty-nine. (In the year of your crime, 9,353 GI’s died).This fierce and fiercely-good poem is very nearly a winner. It limits itself, strangely, by being so very much a “this really happened” poem. Even if it didn’t… though I fear it did. --Fiona SampsonBlues and green by Elodie Pritchartt The TownThe wind blew through yesterday. Rain beat the petals off the flowers on the catalpa tree, pasted them to the pavement like reminders that nothing lasts forever.
It scrubbed the troubled air pure clean. All it left was the scar from the car that slammed into that tree on New Year’s Eve.
Wind again today and rain. The tin roof beats a bittersweet tattoo. Still life through blue bottles on the sill. Be still. Listen. The rain sounds like a hush overhead. Hear it? That’s fate passing by, for now.What sounds a little banal to begin with – it’s very hard to achieve this kind of representation of a near-meditative state – grows in dignity and complexity (and you can hear it in the grammatical forms) in the final stanza. --Fiona SampsonDust Sparkles in the Night by Julie Corbett The Write IdeaWe are walking before the witching hour and can feel lights in houses warning us against the dark. But slowly the buildings nod off, street lights and car headlights become our only guardians. Then our eyes accommodate to Erebos’s darkness and we start to search for constellations. It is mid August and we are heading out of town towards the estuary. Our intention to lay down and look upwards to the northeast and capture in our memories shooting stars of the Perseid Meteor Shower.
The city at our back gives out growls of late night traffic and sometimes the howl of a siren. We walk along the main road instead of the pedestrian pathway for what we know to be false security. Taxi cabs and lorries pass by us, not one taking any interest in our journey. In the moonlight, cranes and gantries on the docks and ferry port form silent battlements along the edges of the water. We reach the jetty and point out the land marks illuminated or looming along the bank or across the River Humber.
I am surprised that the smell of the open sea is so salty-strong and the movement of the swell has that shape of waves falling onto a beach. We unpack our mats and covers and lay down. Clouds and the light from the moon obscure parts of the sky. It is a magnificent display and for the first half hour we compete to spot the meteorites, straining our necks until we learn to stay focused on just one sector. Our talk is earnest and light with those words of love that wordsmiths and artists do ache well to overhear. A strong serious poem, with a sophisticated approach and diction (vocabulary!), only faintly betrayed by its arrival point. --Fiona SampsonGodiva's Horse by Laurie Byro Desert Moon ReviewMy God, he was a devil of a man to make my lady weep into my head before she rode
with the heaviness of a sparrow, broken winged, broken-hearted, her eyes furtively
cast down murmuring stories to me as she passed through the shuttered town.
Only I know her secret. I am a horse, no opinion, they gelded me for less, neither
“Nay” or “Yea” to tax. There is not a man alive who knows that before her regal ride,
there were tears. Ghosts become alive when they are haunted by bickering.
She straddles me, her waves of tears, her diaphanous white shift, the seeping blue shells that she sets
on the garden stones to tempt glass-eyed birds to mate. She is planting a poison garden, sowing
wolfsbane and nightshade to settle to the mulch. I am nothing to her but a strong neck, a strong back.
She is not the first woman to weep, not the first woman to carry the ocean inside her.I love the confidence of this opening, of the idiomatic diction. --Fiona SampsonHarley's Calf by William Dixon Tin Roof Alley PoetsYou see, I was just busy, not belated. The day was packed with this and full with that, Like calming little Amy Johnson’s worries By climbing up a tree to get her cat.
No sooner down than Jess comes riding up To ask if I could come and help him break Some wild range mustangs needed for the roundup. I didn’t reckon how long that would take.
About the time we smoothed those mustangs’ wrinkles, Comes Harley Hapgood looking for his calf. I’m thinking, “No,” but Harley’s a fine fella Who’s always good for sharing beers and laughs.
So, Mutt, my dog, and me, we take the rim side, While Harley rode the foothills trail. My hound Caught wind of Harley’s calf before I saw it, And took off baying. That calf heard the sound.
Stampeded by his fear of tooth and claw, Wild-eyed, he headed straight for Tom Fool’s Leap Where Sweet Sue Barclay likes to hang her wash out. (Just why’s another story that will keep.)
Well, Mutt and I, on Chuckles, (that’s my horse,) We ran that half-crazed calf down fast enough. I got in range and tossed my rope and snagged it. About that time is when things got real rough.
The calf, he scooted round Sue’s swivel clothes pole, And caught Sue off her guard The clothes pole swung With Sweet Sue hanging on for dear life, soaring Above the gulch below her. There she hung.
As fast as thinking, but not really thinking, I lept from Chuckles, grabbed the rim side pole And swinging hard swung Sweet Sue back to rim side Then swung some more until I could let go
And land on solid ground right there beside her. You’d think she’d sigh and say, “My hero!” No… Instead she growled and slapped me silly, cussing At calves and cowboys. All this goes to show
Why I let slip that that day was your birthday, And why I went and spent an hour or more Just sitting on a barstool quaffing rootbeer While pondering life’s mysteries, before
It struck me that I ought to call and wish you A “Happy Birthday!” but you weren’t awake. To make it up, I thought I’d send this picture As proof that I ain’t lying. What a break
That right there at that moment was a fella Who knew it was a shot he had to take. The name of that photographer don’t matter, But just in case you’re wondering, it’s just Jake.A jolly appropriation of western songs and ballad form – its turn to sadness perhaps not dark enough and its diction a tiny bit cosy. --Fiona SampsonMy next film by John Glennon Poets' Graveswill have a bearded left wing protagonist raging on behalf of the proletariat.
He’ll share a flat with a metaphor for the 21st century malaise
and when they talk
they will talk in the forgotten syntax of washing powder ads from the 50’s and construct sentences from toilet graffiti remembered from youth.
Their flat will be infested with insects and disgruntled middle management, grumbling about the lack of vertical opportunities and the implementation of a new computer system.
Filing cabinets will contain stolen secrets of unknown cultures, manilla folders will hold evidence of unsolved murder cases stretching back a hundred years where the suspects all look uncannily the same.
The theory of a time travelling murderer is considered but never openly discussed.
The fridge contains nothing but under developed ideas and stale rhetoric.
This is a flat with no doors.This is a deft and well-organised poem – my only reservation that it’s a format familiar from other poets. --Fiona SampsonScalpel by Richard Moorhead Wild Poetry ForumLike wire but stronger, glass - a sheet thereof thin as grief, pushed beneath a fingernail, or in the coppery swamp of bloody tongue. Might snip away the flap of skin that tenses
to the jaw. How easily it glides like lies through the merely meat of me. Apart from doctors, who is more superior? I wonder. After the first shock of pain (I cannot ever
capture how everything just stops), the rooted socket like some just wrenched tooth glows if I worry it with broken bone. The blunt end of a finger satisfies, the sharp end’s splinters
heat me up. Everyone, unless you fight back, may be how I heed advice. They say they have the sharpness of diamonds, but I will not be satisfied with simply being told.Very interesting ideas and images, just marred by occasional archaism (“thereof”) and clotted syntax. --Fiona SampsonToday I Was Her Dad Though Tonight She Asks Me Where The Man Is Who Raked Leaves by Billy Howell-Sinnard The Writer's BlockShe got out of bed today. I asked her to help me in the yard, surprised that she said yes. She raked ulu leaves into a pile of crumbling softball mitts. After five minutes, she tired, sat in the lawn chair examining her fingernails as if other worlds brood at the gnawed edges, which she does when she’s not rubbing her bed for hours like the Eskimos do when they rub clockwise one stone against another waiting for a vision. Home Boy jumped on her lap, coaxed her red-blotched, dried, and flaking hand from out of its sleeve to scratch behind his ear. She was no longer Rosie or Sarah, or unable to answer, or the forty year old daughter with no name. She thanked me for helping her in the yard.A good, clean delivery of a straightforward, well-balanced poem, almost religious in its clarity. This material could so easily have been saccharine in less-experienced hands. --Fiona SampsonWhat This Poem Will Do by Mignon Ariel King The WatersThis poem was written for you, but it is not yours. This poem has a brain, so it left you. This poem has quite a memory, and it will never, ever forget why it left. This is a poem that will change, crawl down into your collar, slither down your chest, flatten its way under your waistband, and wait. Some day, while you are making love to someone–the type who easily forgets–you will feel this poem like a vice, have to take it like a man. This poem will then politely remind you it is no longer for you at all, as it was never yours. This poem will not be mis-taken. Where will you be when you know it?Wry and deft, this poem is all in the pacing, as it pivots on enjambments and qualifying clauses. --Fiona Sampson
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Jul 26 10, 08:00
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place A lesson on multiplication by Judy Kaber The WatersA girl in my class is obsessed with babies. Each spare minute she draws them, their large heads bobble on the page, forever nodding. No words enter their minds. They never speak, hold hands, or even wave. They exist mutely, before language, all staring eyes, wide raucous mouth. If they think at all, it is in pictures, raw images, bands of color with undulant threads, circular shapes that bring comfort, mottled air that brings hunger or grief. They know nothing of math, less even than the girl who draws them instead of cobbling meaning from the story of Tom with his two dozen eggs and a desire to bake cakes. No numbers appear. Only hair. Lips. Longing.This is a deft, never cautious, astonishing poem. It makes us think differently about girls and their daydreams, about classrooms – and above all about babies. A real feat and above all no hostages to sweetness along the way. --Fiona SampsonSecond Place (tie) history of the kite riff by Steve Parker criticalpoet.orglittle boys under the tree in ragged shorts legs rough with stings at night the sheets heavy almost wetted with damp walls thick as dawn hillfog stifling the sheep cries six layers of wool blanket and the mortar falling out white and limey porridge every morning the range coughs up a stirring mother thin as a wooden spoon cracked down the middle from want a boy in a hammock our only toy a net laden spinning between trees stop it he cries at night mice on your chest so tame you can pick them up but not the rats my brother gets his thumbnail bitten off waking to a big one you smell them under the floorboards rotting with the Warfarin can’t drink it burns them deep but you can’t dig them out goddamn hippies dancing up there on the hilltop drugged as rats in head-high nettles just think what they are doing in the mist Granddad on the roof making his last kite just imagine she said miles it went out across the valley far as aeroplanes we never knew such kite flight as this RM Ballantyne rescued from a burnt house scorched but wild dogs the coral the stitched sacking you know how many rats in a hay barn gather they cry now with pitchforks the last bale lifted they start running a tine through the middle they hiss and bite like overdone porridge bubbling its last bloody geology the woman stands impervious to hot spitting thin and surrendered martyred, spooned out motherStunning, vivid, exact and taking no hostages. The only reason this didn’t win outright is that it’s easier, after all, to write a piece like this as prose poetry – and I’m not quite sure why it is in that (very specific) form. I like the detail of the Warfarin and the “damp walls think as dawn hillfog” – terrific reversal of the simile! The demotic, the refusal to lower the stakes at any point, the headlong rush into grief. Visceral and terrific. --Fiona SampsonSecond Place (tie) Weasel by Laurie Byro Desert Moon ReviewAh sun-flower! weary of time— William Blake
I started to tell you about the friend who was in trouble, how the oily rum had stained the sheets where they slept, how
he’s in a wheelchair now, unable to care for himself, basic things, things American couples talk about freely. At the seminar,
finding out about the Blakes reading Paradise Lost while naked, one bold slash after the other of ink—I don’t know enough about Tygers
and burning or sunflowers to move on, compare our lives to theirs. Michael, so many stories of nothing, the days I walk without you, holding
your hand. Today, trudging through the park with Elaine, I remembered all that heat roaring down my neck, the kids taunting me at the bus,
my mom out, again, still—shrilly making everyone know there was trouble in the house. There was a smell, she said, an animal has just lumbered
through, feral, in pain, not in heat. He was leaving behind a warning, something was about to go wrong. Those gnats and the ones we couldn’t slap,
the no-see-em hours, those were the ones that take us down. Later I insisted, holding your hand, “Nothing, it’s nothing.” And you with your calm eyes watching
said “there’s a weasel on the property. Sleek and plucky, handsome, you’ll like it, they are not as you’ve been told.” I didn’t want to tell you about the day, to spoil
the summer sunflowers you had just planted, bring up the wasting and night sweats that had descended on their bed. I don’t want to admit that I want
to die first, to be the trouble and not the teller of it, the spiller of secret ink, I simply nodded, and touched your hand whispering: “Please be careful of it.”This starts so well; it just gets a bit clotted with judgmental register around stanza 6 (and 5). And a little too much is meaningfully left unsaid – these sound like storybook AIDS symptoms, but the stakes are no longer as they were in the 1990s, in the West… But elegant and thoughtful and a very interesting synthesis of the two strands, none the less. --Fiona SampsonThird Place Glass by David Callin Poets' GravesShades of green and grey. We have one word for both, suggesting either colour-blindness of an unassuming nature - not the sort that blackens skies and paints the cornfield red - or a mild disinclination to distinguish between two cats of a similar complexion.
Was it the world turned down a notch or two, simmering over a moderate heat without rightly coming to the boil, or did they view the landscape differently, through eyes attuned to all the subtle interplay of glorious green and polychromatic grey?This meditation on the Welsh word glas (or similar in another language.) manages wonderfully to be intelligent and think-ey and not to lapse into Anglo-Welsh twee. Not a Blodauwedd or bracken hillside in sight. Thank heavens! Modernises and purifies the dialect, or at least the poetry, of the tribe. --Fiona SampsonHonorable Mention
After Running Over the Neighbor’s Dog by Fred Longworth Wild Poetry ForumHonda really needs to design their windshields better. This sedan ought to be called The Glaucoma. And who issued passports to the streetlamps? As for the moon, it should be brought in for questioning. See how it gathers with the clouds above a dark alley. This is a perfect example of a conspiracy. My glasses look a lot like yours, except that mine were stolen from my nose and ears, and stuffed behind the sofa cushion.
The sidewalk is far too narrow. Check out that ant. It has one row of legs over the curb and the other three grazing the pyracanthas. Mojo had no choice but asphalt. Besides, Mr. Rayburn always parks his giant pickup right where the roadway curves. It’s him that should pay for the funeral. People say that mutts like to lie around and sleep, but I’m convinced that some dogs need to take Ritalin.
The law declares that when they’re outside, they’re supposed to be leashed or yarded. My neighbor should be charged with a misdemeanor, and Mojo cited for jaywalking. I’m told he wasn’t neutered. Thank me for all the stray pups that won’t need to be euthanized. Too fast? You say I was driving too fast? You’re the one who’s always late, always making excuses.This is witty and well-considered – the poet really goes into all the possibilities within the riff, opening out the idea like an unpacked tent. I especially like the ease of diction – “Check out that ant”. Nothing strained or studious. And then a real bit of emotional reportage at the end. Yes: that’s so like a real relationship! --Fiona Sampsonanorak by Carmela Cohen conjunctionfor Mister Prime Minister and Eternal Love
wide awake word
wedded to
the bed headed world. talks to the butterflies to. the flight of polished
off stairs. to the left, beware. to the right yes take care. so scared so dared tracking dust’s railroad rust over bamboo bottled flutes. so snared sacking loco e motion’s
gut of self consciousness. cobra, the great hypnotic work: devotion. wide
awake word
smack
of something other than troubled gum wind startled stunts. say something like chunt not cholent shunt
not shan’t. nest test rest redolent not frozen noses. a dozen eskimo
roses.
why lie
awake, word, hording boardwalks and bean stalks. what have you heard?
the scarecrow’d snowflake
the skein
of transfixed tambourines? blue spotted moon belt of
falling
falling for love? inadequate terms for remorse for
buried alive. wide a wake word.
weeded out from the avalanche birds. shall coat your tongue with my lips. this once. This is rhythmic, poised and frankly beautiful. They only reason I didn’t place it (higher) is that I’m not completely convinced it gathers to a completed meaning. Which is kind of the point, but it’s still important to make the poem convincing – even through cheating with palimpsest/frames etc. --Fiona SampsonFather by Brian Lowry criticalpoet.orgHe taught me to spell grasshopper, “g-r-a-double s-hippitty hop, flippitty flop, don’t stop ‘til you get to the top-e-r, grasshopper.
And Constantinople was, “Catcha-key, catcha-kye, catcha-constantinye, catch an ople, catch a poeple, catch a Constantinople.”
In his time there were no cell phones, no digital technologies, no personal computers. Blackberries, he walked miles for,
picked and ate with the pleasure of childhood. His countenance was an oil-filled lantern.
This morning’s mizzle, the predawn darkness, the animals’ slow stirring when I fed, brought his light to my head.
And the cricketsong, which had gone unnoticed, underscored the rhythm of heaven and earth as one. Charming and well-chosen instances. And I like the gathering rhyme towards the last couplet. Just a tiny bit conservative, in both diction (“Blackberries, he walked miles for”) and message. --Fiona SampsonSt. Hilda Home by Julie Corbett The Write IdeaSunday and another visit; Daffodils the first cut from our garden. A car journey and we travel across the city, not away from the suburbs. Duty calling from my father’s past. We arrive two hours after lunch. Time to take afternoon tea. I sit in the quiet lounge waiting to hear if I am known or recalled. Grandmother formed memories too fragile in her later years only the past thoughts of the strong arms of lovers and the names of her children keep her graceful hands and eyes from falling closed and still in the day now.Quiet, intelligent, thoughtful. Don’t like the use of passive tense in lines 8/9 – if you could change to the more straightforward “whether she knows or recalls me” it would release the poem up a level, make it lose its slight mannered-ness. --Fiona Sampsonyeah man snap snap like that by William Dixon Smith Tin Roof Alley Poetsso like theres this dude yeah and like you know hes rude man like it was freaking me out like snap snap like that
so like I totally fronted his play yeah got in his grill you know man like in a back in my day way snap snap like that
so like he folded in the face of my fury yeah like totally backed down apologized man it was so freaking street you know snap snap like that
what oh my eye yeah like you know man when you get in someones face snap snap like that crackle and pop sure gonna follow
yeah man snap snap like that I admire the lift and rhythmic lightness of this one. The sting in the tail is quickly delivered… --Fiona Sampson
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Sep 6 10, 17:19
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
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 KocherSecond Place Pantone 1665 C. by Ben Johnson The Poets' GravesIt 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 KocherThird Place Bone-Song by Laurie Byro Desert Moon ReviewMy 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
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Sep 6 10, 17:27
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place The Catch by C.J. Costello The Poets' GravesPlease don’t stare: I am trying to remember the weight of water on scales; a current that carries even when other weights pull the vertebrate from its bed upstream, downstream, a translucent stream caressing the honesty
of nakedness that can’t hold these failing fins as they glide for eons through the onrush of air; they will not wither but they will forget why they are here
this glassy eye, in its opaque mind, isn’t glaring can’t you see – it’s trying to remember?The poem here cascades into the power of its last line, a line that opens up the poem to the rest of the world. The expansion we feel here belies its subtle delivery. The poem wastes no language and begins its work in the very first clause of the very first line. The writer demonstrates an adept skill of ushering the reader through the poem, quietly, yet assuredly. The poem is a showcase for the crafted voice of this writer who knows most what a poet should keep, and what a poet should let go. I love most how the fish in the poem becomes the mysterious locus of convergence, the infinite nature of the Aleph in the sense of Borges, a single breath representing what we are, what we've been, and what we might hope to be. --Ruth Ellen KocherSecond Place A Quieting by Michael Harty Wild Poetry ForumEvery day she spoke of the wind, always the wind, constant as her presence, molding every tree to point a steady northeast, scouring paint from the south wall, decorating barbed wire with tumbleweeds, mesquite with candy wrappers and rags.
Familiar as a bedtime book: the chinks never sealed, dustmopping twice a day, still the skids on powdery linoleum, still the jokes about grit in the sandwiches.
Every day, until the day you walked through a house full of silence, stepped out a screen door, leaned into a wind that wasn’t there, staggered, almost fell.The poem pivots on the notion of suspension and the open ended signification of what is familiar and so yet unknown. We find ourselves as readers settling into the poem, into the poem's language, such that the elusive pronouns, "she" and "you" seem not so much untethered but mysterious and inviting. The poem slips into the fantastic utterance and yet, we do not question being led by each successive image. The marriage of disparate objects and references serves the magical feeling of the poem and allows it to hover between a moment of true recollection and a moment of dream --Ruth Ellen KocherThird Place Natural Selections by Michelle Beth Cronk Poetry CircleThere are things to be earned by stone, hard reasons, work. The same are often bruised by our necessity,
but there are other things soft and unhurt, existing separate from our leaning, taken or shed before our efforts begin.
There is a blueprint, the start of buildings and rooms, prior to the breaking of indicated ground. Those are the scrolls I want
you to reach for before night. I want you to have both the spoils of the fight and the ease of what is certain and elementary.The poet here has taken a risk by investing in the 'unsaid'. To keep from the reader the articles of inspiration in the beginning of the poem would result in a piece not yet grounded if it were not for the definitive moment that begins mid-poem. While the turn doesn't represent a true volta, the shift represents a moment where the speaker seems to succumb to the sharp pang of specificity and so, the personal. The end of the poem serves as a revelation of the speaker, not for the speaker, and so allows the slowly building and subtle dynamic of the poem to transcend into an resolute, definitive quietude. --Ruth Ellen Kocher
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Oct 29 10, 08:17
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place Ways to Paint a Woman by Lois P. Jones PenShellsA 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 KocherSecond Place Her Quinceañera by Lynn Doiron Poetry CircleThat 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 KocherThird Place Ethics by Helmuth Filipowitsch Wild Poetry ForumOur 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
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Dec 28 10, 15:05
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place Chichicapa, Mexico by Bernard Henrie The Writer's BlockMezcal Del Maguey Chichicapa is one dirt road farther than the day laborers from Oaxaca.
Coconut farmers live there, hands and clothes carry the scent of bath soap.
The men are brown as beans. Washing under outdoor pumps their bellies are plump and white.
We play dominoes under the shade of my copal tree and share the Mezcal of the city.
When they sleep on the Day of the Dead they awake refreshed and disappointed.
Women walk single file the way women once followed behind ancient horsemen.
In my clinic, they point on a doll to the places they hurt. When they don’t want me, they speak Mayan.
When they nurse, their breasts fall as sweet potatoes from a basket. They carry barley corn in their pockets.
Children run after the red pullets. They ride a stuttering burrow who circles the plaza as though trying to remember.
Older girls stay with one another, long chestnut arms, I imagine their pupils set with deep purple iris.
Young men gamble with their deaf beauty. Turkeys come to them, stars whiten.
Skinned animals hang in the market, small goats chew, their bobbed tails twirl.
Dried stigmas from the saffron crocus stiffen on pages of newsprint.
Night rises from the arroyo north of the city and turns my house black.
I read under the hurricane lamp. The crickets move close, the eyes of the yellow dog are open in a waking trance.
The town cannot afford a bright moon. Shooting stars are clean as bells, voyaging planets slide close.
You cannot write them, there is no post office. It is too far for the bus to come.This poem is enlivened by its awe and cold wonder of the place. I also like the humility of last stanza: "You cannot write them, there is no post office." This seems to suggest something about the limitations of description, the inability to make complete meaning of a bewildering experience. --Paul LisickySecond Place Iowa Born by Billy Howell-Sinnard The Writer's BlockTo be raised like a pig. To not come out until years later after the dirt wouldn’t. The smell in my nostrils to this day.
I keep looking back, under, sometimes up. I snuff water. It hurts. It doesn’t help.
It’s on my fingers, on my clothes, in my car. My wife puts her nose to my skin. I’ve smelled it. It’s me, the me I know best, can’t forget.
My fingerprint on air: ubiquitous, delirious, musky, amber, repugnant.
If they tracked it like bloodhounds sniff out a body, dying, living, shitting, it’s left on couches, pillows, shoes, socks, on women’s bodies.
A confluence of soul longing, obsessing until I can’t stand myself, take a shower.
I sniff my finger after rooting in my ear for a sound, a word turned to a waxy cartouche.
All the dirty words, dirty loves, dirty lies, dirty suspicions distilled into liquor in the dark hole of my head, in the pigsty I come from.
It’s lost any meaning. Smelling the intoxicating filth one last time, I cry. I laugh.There's an inventive syntax in this poem, an attention to the way sentences make unexpected rhythms. And I love the dark humor, the simultaneously seductive and queasy sense of smell on the air: "ubiquitous, delirious. --Paul LisickyThird Place God War by T. Obatala About Poetry ForumIn one short instance, in one short breath I kill all the names
of any of the gods. The god of the tight-lipped father, the god of the smoke
in the jelly jar, the god of ‘Who shot J.R.,’ the god of the blackest man, even the god of the secretary on Dixie Highway,
and like these gods even you must submit to a final authority. A human being might straddle another one for years or even a lifetime but they
are nothing like a god and all of the babies who managed to make their way out know this.An appealingly sassy poem that makes use of a dark litany to bring about an unexpected ending. ----Paul Lisicky
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Dec 28 10, 15:13
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place Hush by Jude Goodwin The WatersWhen the rains come there’ll be pumpkins rotting in the garden and bargain store spider webs heavy on the leafless sumac and when the darkness humps the grasses, clumps along the concrete walk there’ll be poppies bleeding onto stone, there’ll be old voices reading the names. When the cold grows bold there’ll be death in every window box –
and love strokes me, love says shush. When the supper’s done there’ll be a fireside and strings drawn from a wooden box, and love says hush.The music, the line breaks, the evocative description: everything in sync here. --Paul LisickySecond Place Doors Beneath Their Signs by Larry Jordan PoetryCircleThe price for knowing God, is an apple, she said with a line drawn by her foot, over which she dared anyone to cross. In the halls of distracted men, she raised her voice, learned to pose as if her toe was inches from a stream.
For which should we care first, our body or our soul, she’d ask the ladies in the vestibule, making coffee, cutting cake, teaching children to say Raphael, just in case.
It seems we quit after landing on the moon, she mused, exploring her closets, drawers, and chests, grabbing her purse and keys. What a day, she thought, walking into Macy’s.The thinking is inventive from image to image; so much breadth suggested by compression. --Paul LisickyThird Place I Could Cry But I Don’t by Billy Howell-Sinnard The Writer's BlockThe things I work with are sharp, made to reach inside, measure what shouldn’t be: histories
of kin and accident, want of life no matter what the consequences. Their excuses can’t delay the decay.
I dress them in gowns, delight them with warmed blankets. Now, pain fills their days like God.An elliptical and rich poem, energized by patterns of contrast. ----Paul Lisicky
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
|
Aug 28 11, 10:20
|
Mosaic Master
Group: Administrator
Posts: 18,892
Joined: 1-August 03
From: Massachusetts
Member No.: 2
Real Name: Lori Kanter
Writer of: Poetry & Prose
Referred By:Imhotep
|
First Place Giant Cockroaches by Mignon Ledgard The Writers BlockI still cry dead leaves yet leave open one day of the week for those who drop by unannounced.
Sweepers brush the streets all night long. I close my eyes, let them stroke my hair while sleep filters through coils of Paradise boxspring and mattress.
The next one will be a hammock under a rubber tree with shiny green ant-boats that float me in waterdreams.
Oh the water—hold me in cold Lima. Oregano tongue. Quivers.
Then come back tomorrow just don’t forget your suede jacket on my leather sofa.
You do not believe in shamans but witchcraft casts its veil around your bed in the Amazon.
You fall into the fog of Lima, this rising cement city against mosquito heaven, black lizards, overgrown egrets with freshwater shrimp in their beak.
You wake and forget each night’s fear—
giant roaches gone, it is always fun to hear the conquest of paranoia, one night at a time. It reminds me of how I get through each wild and boisterous day.A musical mind at work. Vivid language, unexpected turns, the manmade colliding with the natural. A beautiful poem. --Paul LisickySecond Place A New Cartography by Mandy Pannett The Write IdeaIt is dark by the river, by this bridge’s underbelly: struts intertwine, cross-hatch. He feels insignificant; small: an ant within a clod of grass.
The bridge is singing a cappella – voices of women shift in its iron: a Celtic lament of the lowlands, drowning, an elegy, death.
He wears a bracelet-like device, for this is a sentient city. A new cartography measures his skin, the contours and spikes of his nerves.
He wonders why the chart of him should always be so flat: no troughs, no peaks, no lines of joy – once he stopped to hear a song: a blackbird in a tree. The graph recorded gentle frills at this.
Let them keep it all, he thinks, their precious watchtowers on a wrist. Let them analyse the heart of man.
The bridge still croons its ballads out, its chords of broken love. He thinks about the note he’s left and hopes it hurts her, hopes she drowns in guilt.
‘Now it’s bound to peak,’ he says. A pigeon watches at the water’s edge.I love this poem's sense of swing, its richness of language. And the delicate force of its central metaphor. --Paul LisickyThird Place Run by Cynthia Neely Desert Moon ReviewYou were eight when Rain-dog died; we buried him high up on the hill where pine trees sigh and sing in the rain. When you got married? that baby? did it die? you ask, Will I
be buried there too? And my words still clot, then jumble out, tumbled like scrabble tiles. Today you are twenty and I am not any closer to explaining things; miles
between us, miles and wings. You say, I’m fine But I recall a day when you were five. I held your hand (then, you still wanted mine) and that dumb dog stuck his snout in a hive
of yellow jackets. Your laces were undone. Even then, I could only holler, Run!Memory and bewilderment: so much life compressed in these four stanzas. ----Paul Lisicky
······· ·······
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the RingsCollaboration feeds innovation. In the spirit of workshopping, please revisit those threads you've critiqued to see if the author has incorporated your ideas, or requests further feedback from you. In addition, reciprocate with those who've responded to you in kind. "I believe it is the act of remembrance, long after our bones have turned to dust, to be the true essence of an afterlife." ~ Lorraine M. KanterNominate a poem for the InterBoard Poetry Competition by taking into careful consideration those poems you feel would best represent Mosaic Musings. For details, click into the IBPC nomination forum. Did that poem just captivate you? Nominate it for the Faery award today! If perfection of form allured your muse, propose the Crown Jewels award. For more information, click here! "Worry looks around, Sorry looks back, Faith looks up." ~ Early detection can save your life.MM Award Winner
|
|
|
|
1 User(s) are reading this topic (1 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)
0 Members:
|
|
Read our FLYERS - click below
Reference links provided to aid in fine-tuning
your writings. ENJOY!
|
|
|
|