InterBoard Poetry Competition

RAT CITY
      Dan Tompsett
      (Gandy Creek)

The streets are the theme
in a hanging mural of fog...

Scratched and torn dollar-
a-hope tickets litter
a bus stop in southwest Seattle.
Day laborers and I sit on knocked
down shopping carts, and wait.
Local pigeons binge on crumbs;
bums are hungry,
but not hungry enough
to bag these feathered free lunches.

A sixteen-year-old school girl,
wearing a mask of rouge-evil,
walks by my much obliged
middle-aged eyes
as the soaked grey air
melts her blue mascara. It runs
thick through my rump-romp thoughts.

The sun Tom-peeps
through the broken pane of a cloud.

A yellow Camaro,
with black and tweetered interior,
booms the happy Big Band sound
that spiked the punch of music
long before Cobain's grunge
and angst hardened the rain
that loves this emerald city.

Judge Robert Sward's comment: “Tough-minded, clear, sharp, well-observed and moving... photographic in its detail.”

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About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
3rd Place Winner, April 2001

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