Third Place Winner, February 2009 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Third Place Winner, February 2009

— *Eric Rhohenstein* (CriticalPoet.org) This only matters in that your eyes see it. Others like it don’t exist, are crumpled in a figurative corner: a paper-moat around a bin. They are bits of a scene in a lousy movie in which a man courts It is not a moat, but a ring. . . his stubborn bit of less-than-genius as if it were a butterfly worth netting. (Every x number of pupations, it stands to reason that a creature must emerge discolored, missing a wing — wholly not itself — as if by mandate: rise like the cream does! remember what the dream was! Perhaps in a movie it would be allowable to consider the more definite.) -slit- I gut it. It bleeds out the bottom. No. It’s the phantom wing, rising Scratch that. Have it falling where only one person hears it; the universe expands a bit / swallows nothing, this, sound Comments by judge Elena Karina Byrne: “This third place poem crosses its own tightrope in a ‘figurative corner’ of the mind. It’s a compelling example of how art averts its subject matter. The psychology becomes an essential part of the material: as a writer struggles, a metaphysical angel/Gregor Samsa ‘creature must emerge’ and it’s the unfolding process of discovery, of creation, which involves the maker, the maker standing back watching himself/herself, and the other unseen viewer, in a triad of perception. Yes, this marvelous ‘universe expands a bit’ as we read it.”