Second Place Winner, February 2003 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Second Place Winner, February 2003

GABRIEL’S CUP
Tamar Silverman
(Melic Review RoundTable)

I fall asleep with Tennyson to dream of Titian angels;
dream I’ve joined with Gabriel, pregnant with giants
grown tired of little men, for if I take the farthest reach,
hind’s feet on high places, surefooted without justification,
beauty becomes what pleases without explanation.

Until then, a thousand dunes to walk, in the tremor
of plagues poured and with your slaves, to exhaustion--
no deliverer come. So let the Cairene women ululate;
let witches curse-- I’ve come for the seer; my want:
The promised land. Anoint my breasts with vanilla;

jasmine between these thighs. Kohl-line the lapis
of my eyes. Brush my hair with olive oil. Coax the cobra
to dance with the asses of men; mix bone and seed,
stone and spice to heal, then wake me in the Dead City,
poisoned beneath gray laburnum trees, to see the skyline

dome and tower slend against a backdrop cerulean deep,
that I may believe, cynically drinking from the beggar’s cup
an old, diminished man has given, to say: Illusions end.

Judge Mark Yakich’s comment: “‘Gabriel’s Cup’ is more formal and yet inventive. What does that mean? Its stanzas are evenly clipped and, for the most part, end stopped. But what makes the poem interesting is its juxtapositions, not of word against word but rather line against line. For example, look at the end words of the lines; they form a nice set of what’s in Gabriel’s cup: angels, giants, reach, justification, explanation, tremor, exhaustion, ululate, want, vanilla, lapis, cobra, seed, Dead City, skyline, deep, cup, end. That set of words could tell a story in itself. Like the first place poem, this one involves dreaming, but it does so in a more structured fashion and come to a more forceful conclusion: ‘Illusions end.’”