| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
| Honorable Mentions, March 2010 | |
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LOT Richard Moorhead (Wild Poetry Forum) I. Bible Story Someone’s wife, no — husband, dreaming of a soup to dip the spouse in. The years taste like her or cream of artichoke with a little lick of sin. II. Readied for Sale How casually you sell my mistakes to recipients of saleable complaints, tie an off-white luggage tag to my big toe, ready me for auction. I despise that but I love the thickness of the paper and the tag’s hole protector — a sticker like a polo mint. I love its old fashionedness. III. That’s your lot It’s not what you have, but the end of what you have. It is not who you are, but the end of who you are. I am reluctant to accept it, like the moment when you move house. Close the last door on an emptied room, register disgust and marvel at the dust surrounding where the frames of pictures lingered with indifference. You should move, but then you’d start to build your lot again. |
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THE FIRST CUT Lana Wiltshire Campbell (Blueline Poetry) the tree surgeon came today at noon made quesadillas on the sidewalk chanted accolades to the spore geist the old ash kept silent waiting for the first incision the plum cried tiny flowers |
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COMFORT Cynthia Neely (The Waters) The sheets were pristine, so clean. Wait, go back The air so clean yes the air like a baby’s breaching breath no, wait. Back further. Before my pen described a needle. Still, before a needle stilled your life. And Mother needed not to cradle me or beg me to remember floating on the bay. Before the needle sought its target, through belly swell, in amniotic sea. Stop, wait, further. Before your father shaved my head. Before the wigs I didn’t like. Before I shopped for scarves instead. No No No. Before the drip drip drip, the cysplat poisoned veins discreetly positioned pans the vague white-coated comfort: You can always have another… Before the errant cell Before I would tell them I chose me over you. Yes, further, further Before, before, when air was clean, when I was clean, and wings were filled, and you still floated on your own private bay. Before I balanced on reflection’s edge, and lay quiet on such pristine sheets with stirruped feet. Before I harbored sparrows in my breast and could not speak for fear of losing those that fluttered darkly to escape. |
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SONG FOR THE GHOST OF GABRIEL GOMEZ* Emily Brink (The Writers’ Block) *about a classmate who died young Your family buried you in your uniform, white and navy. I heard you grew wings in the grave and escaped in a lowrider. You are closer to God than I. So tell me does he whisper in your ear, exactly where St. Lucy left her famous eyes? You are descending into the crater of a volcano to resurrect Aztec virgins, you are watching over the young mothers crossing the Senora into the United States. When you died an alcoholic priest wrote your elegy with trembling hands— Your brother, pockets full of heroin needles, was ashamed it wasn’t him who died. And here I am, in the pitch of St. Raymond’s, surprised by tears. It has been so long since I knelt for anything. 
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