| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
THE SMELL OF BUTTER
Selig
(About Poetry Forum)
The butter was never sweet
It tasted of salt
I remember the smell
It was sour and seemed
to gather in pockets, so that
as I walked from one room to another,
I was sometimes overwhelmed by it
The day they killed the pig
I lay on the kitchen floor,
feeling ill and watching her hands
She sang in gaelic about the winds
and the cliffs on the west coast
Her hands had no music in them
They slapped and slipped through
the bowl squeezing the curds
“Sugar Nanna?” I asked
“Will you put sugar in?”
She gazed at me
“You don't need sugar in butter child”
My father called her The Last Drop
Never happy till she used the last drop
I watched him stare gloomily into his bottle
“The last drop” he said “is always the saddest one”
“Never waste anything” she told me
“you'll never enjoy things if you waste them”
In the afternoon heat
It seemed the only thing that moved was Nanna
She was the bustle
in a house of silence
And when I think back
She is the only image that remains
She is the chimney, the northern wall
The last thing standing
When life crumbled
I would ask her if I could
“If you enjoy something Nanna,
is it ever wasted?”
AN AFTERNOON IN THE STRIP MALL
Suzanne Griffith
(Utne Cafe)
We had the rains
that washed away winter.
Now, mid-January,
cherry blossoms
brighten the eyes
of the woman in the title company
who visited Japan
and knows what they mean;
blue sky
gladdens the heart
of the waiter
in the Thai restaurant
next door to the title company;
and at home,
plum tree,
quickening.
RAIN SNAPSHOTS AT THE BEACH
Janet Kenny
(Wild Poetry Forum)
i
Pearl sky purples above dark rocks
as rain arrives to drench the beach.
Shadow now where sun was. A scene-
change for melodrama, with lights,
thunder, and rushing figures.
ii
Addicted swimmers linger in hissing
waves as they greet the deluge.
Even Venus loafs in warm sea, careless
of wetness where elements merge,
her loose red hair dank seaweed-green.
iii
Tall, bellied grandfather, stork-legged,
frets by the ocean edge, afidget
at children who stay in amniotic
security, more known than remembered.
He half recalls sliding in waters.
iv
Sad fat man in black, soaked no longer
by sun, slowly rises from the sand,
and squelches, bubbling in thongs,
for solitary beer and fish. Always
another way to flee melancholy.
v
Sea and clouds latticed with light
subtly surpass public fireworks
but unsung, play to an empty house.
Stray worshippers applaud silently,
and smile recognition without words.
Nothing much has happened here
apart from things that matter.
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
Entries representing the About Poetry Forum, February 2002
