First Place Winner, January 2004 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

First Place Winner, January 2004

palm fronds should be coiffed just so
      PJ Nights
      (MiPo)

in deepest Brittany, she rides
   the evening – ears afire – a gram
of dinner napkin
   marking the corner of her smile

her hum gives the buggy’s wheels
   a colored tilt

            pines rise

on blue thermals above the lake’s
closed ears and Jeanette-no-pockets
   puts the silver eyes of birdsong
in her lap, lays thirty mice on a dime

cropped August recrosses the water –
   only fires and leftover bells slow
the winter at her feet      she flies

   to Tahiti      the all-out blue day
buys Gauguins’s kids with the little good silver
      left in her purse

on la Rue Mouffetard, she sells
   her little white hen, its clutch
of flushed eggs      with the richness of wolves
and poise, she replenishes the days

   January gargles Chanel no. 5
      ballerinas toe the time

Judge John Poch’s comment: “I chose this poem as the first place poem for January partly because I’m a sucker for love/praise poems. But this one’s got so many fresh imaginative maneuvers, it sets itself apart. The poem is anchored in a sort of French decadence, but it doesn’t allow sleazy violence or cheap sexuality to overwhelm it. The poem owes a debt to Stevens; this poet has an ear for sound, and this is a rare quality. I am not usually a fan of the abandonment of punctuation and regular caps (unless you can do it as well as W.S. Merwin), but here I’ve got no problem with the presentation of the poem as is. Listen to this poem!”