Third Place Winner, April 2002 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Third Place Winner, April 2002

MULLIGRUBS, MARCH
Jim Zola
(The Writer's Block)

Nothing disturbs the berm
as it aspires towards
a grassy knoll, the path

to your misgivings. I pocket them,
touch my freckled hollow, my whiffet.
Here, take a digit, an ounce.

I practice the reverse of no,
of knowing. My cock
points towards the moon.

Things fall off. I pick up
stones from wet morning grass,
wash them in my cheeks.

I speak of love and poetry,
rigmarole and poppycock.
Who is the you of this?

Not the wife I left,
caught embracing
the wide windows

of another man's life. I know
you are out there too.
I save my broken teeth

for when we meet,
your dress, bone-buttoned,
scrunched about your hips.

There¹s not much left.
I sit in the grass and count
the birds. I could name them

if it mattered. Sulky whiff,
cat bait, breath of my dark. I wait.
Nothing creeps closer.

Judge Sheila Bender's comment: “There is a kind of contained madness and anger in this poem that tells the inner story ('...I pick up / stones from wet morning grass, / wash them in my cheeks' and 'I save my broken teeth // for when we meet...' for instance). As readers, we remain seated with the speaker on a berm where nothing comes closer. Once again, the lyric and the narrative join to find and hold a strong, original, memorable rush of emotion that both holds us at bay ('nothing comes closer') and invites us in ('I know / you are out there too'). We watch the speaker in his private moment trying to hold on to being as he also self-destructs. Capturing this moment in all of its duality is an achievement.”