Honorable Mentions, February 2008 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

Filed In:

Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Honorable Mentions, February 2008

STOMA *Laurie Byro* (About Poetry Forum) The bag my mother carries coos like a muffled baby owl. She hides it on her side like a purse with gold and silver coins left to spend. When she moves it gurgles like a sooty faced bird, more raven than eagle. She is self conscious, afraid it will fly away without her. She fears her life will be set loose like a snake in its hungry beak. What is left, after the surgeons cut part of her away, is this graceless winged woman, a white gown instead of plumes, a thatch of broken weeds. The doctor has no magic tricks up his sleeves. She sits on her nest incubating regret, hums while morning streaks the sky red. She waits on her little clay throne.


BLACK MAN CARRYING ALLIGATOR SUITCASE *Bernard Henrie* (The Writer’s Block) Only I know how my heart feels, to lose from the beginning and gain slowly, to give away with both hands. To enter rooms that fall silent. The withering looks and absentminded curiosity. I listen, but fail to speak. The cascading loneliness, the deluge of expectations, the grades and judgments which leave me empty. The feeling is not new, but expressing the feeling is new; I write more often in my diary book, scribble to myself, gawk at myself, fix a permanent record of what I know. I smile like a man from the country wearing the wrong clothes in the city. Or when you leave work early but miss your train and rest on a bench in the idle station.


HAWAIIAN CHICKEN (NOT A RECIPE) *Alice Folkart* (Blueline Poetry Forum) A fine flock of feral chickens flutter and budget beside Pali highway. Feathers ruffle, rusted by the rain downy breasts blackened by mildew. Rooster-king alert, proprietary, bright-eyed, herds wind-up chicks toward the hen-harem. Tiny brains in weensy heads search out tasty tidbits, wriggling worms, juicy grubs. Scratching, slicing with skeletal yellow feet in the rotted leaves at the very edge of tangled forest. Raging traffic roars a foot away, as unreal to them as distant galaxies are to us.


About the InterBoard Poetry Competition Archive of IBPC Winners