Third Place Winner, January 2006 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Third Place Winner, January 2006

BLINKING LIGHTS
Yolanda Calderon-Horn
(Frugal Poet)

Winter’s tightly squared on the window.
The rind of hard rain sputters
over reindeers with bobbing heads.

I remember watching his lips the first time:
slick, like surviving ice-cubes. My tongue,
my lips were unstill all night.

I went home kissless.
By New Year’s, I knew.
Today, I rub against walls

to keep warm. Love is wintering.
Soon we’ll be an art form
hanging on lines of icy banter.

When the kids come,
they’ll expect crystal angels
on the Douglas fir.

I don’t know if it’s the eggnog,
but my eyes have gotten warm.
And it’s really packing in now.

Judge Ravi Shankar’s comments: “Like a muted bulb shining dimly red to the scrim of a thin scarf, this poem emanates a warmth and sensuality that’s punctuated by quirkiness, a warmth that’s belied by the winter that rages outside. The affects of domestic existence are given corporal shape (‘reindeers with bobbing heads,’ eggnog and crystal angels) and the world of imagery is remarkably consistent. The frigid end of the year is kissless, without intimate contact, leaving the speaker’s lips unstill. There are some suspect figurations (‘a rind of hard rain’ or ‘surviving ice cubes,’ a feat most toddlers have performed) here and we never get to peer into the characters in the poem with the depth we might desire, (him, the kids, the speaker), but those are made up for by the ‘icy banter’ and the visage of the sinuous, writhing, yet ultimately lonely form of the speaker rubbing against the walls to keep warm while snow and memory come packing in.”