Honorable Mentions, March 2002 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Honorable Mentions, March 2002

THE SONG OR ROCK STARS
T.E. Ballard
(Blueline Poetry Forum)

“What a man,” my aunt says
as she shoves a glossy image into my lap.
“Listen to my Kris sing,” and I do
as he smiles up at me
like a father or a lost savior
dressed in beard and sandals.
At thirteen, my legs are white, cold;
I fill a chair my aunt has nailed
to the middle of the kitchen floor.
The linoleum cracks, fades
under her photos of bee-hives, waves.
I notice this and the smell of hair
caught in an iron. My smell
on the back of her hand.

This is the summer
she'll make a red satin dress
for the school play;
the summer I will lie and say yes,
my mother made it.
Between voices and demons, she took
needle, thread -- thought of me.

Later, my aunt will disappear
after what grandmother calls
an embarrassment of charging
my uncle with rape. “Imagine,”
grandmother will say and I do
while everyone sits at the table
covers the hole left by the chair.
A hole small enough for a girl
to fall through and she does
to the boy who waits after the play,
kisses the side of her neck.
Removes the red strap
without music or words,
just his hands resting on her back
in shape of a cross.

THE PRACTICE OF GLIDING UNDER
Ani Gjika
(Blueline Poetry Forum)

The one in the nightgown...

In the little room,
beyond her childhood's sleep,
Xhilda daubs on perfume,
her senses loosening
before she loosens hair and legs
to the next gentleman at the door.

the one descending stairs toward you,
or the one constantly ascending in your mind
becoming the highest thought,

The young girl plucks a date from the date palm,
rubs it on her thigh, cuts it up and gives him half.
I want to show you something, she says,
and cracks the seed open with her teeth. Look,
she says, pointing at the insides, did you know
such seeds hide tiny forks and knives?

the one who can reach you
in your childhood with a kiss,

At the foot of a mountain,
surrounded by olive branches, a woman
recalls oil baths and the slippery spheres
of his tongue when the space beneath her
fingernails drowns in green-black
each time she picks from the olive tree.

the woman in the doorway barefoot,
or on the couch reading,

She leans over the crib to watch
her child sleep, then turning to hear
her husband snore in their bed, comes out
of the bedroom and without turning on the light
touches her baby's clothes on the couch
and knows what her house holds.

the one leaning over the balcony
to throw you a scarf some winter morning
when you leave for work,

They turn over their coffee cups to drain
on the newspaper, and minutes later glance inside them
as if gods looking down on life. Oh Monda,
one cries, you have a coffin in the family,
watching the other's face shrink
while today's news drowns in coffee silt.

the one writing in the dark,

After a bath, a young woman checks herself
in the mirror. She has lost some weight.
Yes, she smiles. On her left thigh,
up at the hip, she notices three or four
shiny little stretch marks. Oh, she thinks,
looks just like a touch from a fairy's hand!

the slap from a woman¹s hand,
from the one who can smell herself on her fingertips,
the fingers you may not see smothering you,

She cries silently as she prays,
like a baby forgotten in despair,
cries in her deathbed palms clasped
like a fly, clasped and waiting
for one more upend
of her life in God's hands.

the one right here

The cripple, on her bed,
remains the ballerina of her past.
She lifts her arms in the dark,
mutters a little song
and the arms dance all night
like evergreens in the wind.

and the one not there
when you turn

At the funeral of her eleven year old son,
the mother freezes, like Lot's wife,
in and out of time, cannot cry
when they lower the coffin in the dark,
only scratches her hands.
It's her flesh that cries.

is the woman gliding under
every woman you will love.

WITHOUT SANCTUARY
Hannah Craig
(Writer's Block)

Lynched men hang sepia on silver lithograph;
bodies long and sweet in the stillness of a frame,
words ripped out by the seams,
documented in a footnote.
Take this postcard instead of a name.
In a beautiful poplar county,
a man dangles from a slow-flower tree
while the sheriff poses, hyena smile on gelatin print.
Pencil inscription on the reverse reads
please visit soon.
Bare thighs make me think of stoats,
weasels slick with sunlight,
mink near the ground, flush with
brown apples and milkweed.
He is the last dead branch
of the tree that holds him,
vanishing into the dark of spring-damp
almond bark.
A shutter drops black cloth over the scene;
the small round aperture blinks on without rhythm,
cracks on knotted wrists,
scored spine and knees.
Do not pity me, he whispers
through the shadow of long arms.

THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S DAUGHTER
Ken Ashworth
(Writer's Block)

Evenings, after cookfires dim
and the chatter of children subsides
within the silence of a conch shell,
she picks her way through salt hay
to a cliff's edge, draws a bow made
from her hair, plays violin to the sea.
Chin crushed to rosewood, face gentled
by a wash of light from the beam,
her fingers fumble then find their rhythm
as when spindling a shuttlecock.
Behind her, the laundry line signals
semaphore to nothing; sails furl and slacken
on the horizon, salt spume prickles
her bare ankles and she is loosed
for a time from her tether to the man
in the wingback tamping the throat
of his meerschaum with a yellowed thumb,
eyes the color of smoke and theft.

THE FAITH STARVELINGS
Lori Williams
(The Sharpened Word)

We are out of bread, soup and tea now.
My little sparrows, perched
on tenuous twigs, still hope.
Their faces bloom with too many bones,
and eyes implore

what is a mother for
but to turn a potato
into a pearl?

My fingers plait smooth hot salt
and the teaspoon of honey melts in a song.
Two figs and a promise with each sip;
mama shall walk on water
tomorrow.