Honorable Mentions, April 2007 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

Filed In:

Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Honorable Mentions, April 2007

BLAS RIVAS *Sally Arango Renata* (South Carolina Writer’s Workshop) Blas Rivas wanted to die on Socialist soil. I heard him say it twice, once on a bus to Cienfuegos and again days later as he lay dying from a blood clot exploding in his brain. I say nothing. It is a quiet pronouncement, an inward ken requiring not even a delayed response. Humidity veils the window, blurring shades of red, blue, hues of skin with the green of sugar cane. Workers turn to wave and smile, an interlude necesario, the essence of custom and fecundity in Cuba the island that rests like a smiling dragon just beyond the chalice of Miami. Judge Bryan Appleyard’s comments: “A really excellent piece of writing that leads you into a mysterious drama of the imagination. But, somehow, it didn’t quite do enough for me. I don’t doubt, however, that this is a poet.”


DROUGHT *Jan Iwaszkiewicz* (Mosaic Musings) I We sink the corner posts first, as each defines a neighbour. It is here where the bottom six inches are the most important. It is here where the strength is muscled into the fence. The heart of a fence lies in its foot. I tamp until the bar sings of possession, the bar bounces and writhes. We snug the stays and tighten the wire, each barbed note is tensioned into voice the division sings a warning. II The fence cannot hold back the drought. The sky aches blue and the sun eats green; the earth coughs dust as rich as blood. My bones hunker down beside the rock. Eagles hang; wings wound into the wire, heads nailed down by the sun. Ribs rack a heaving fleece. I watch my image fade from the eye of a lamb. Judge Bryan Appleyard’s comments: “Could have been a winner easily; it displays a really passionate sense of detail and sinewy effort. I think, however, this poet needs to develop a little more.”


FOR PMD *Mitchell Geller* (Desert Moon Review) Normally this week I'd gather together the ingredients for your special birthday cake: a rather grandiose Victoria Sandwich. Two layers of orange Genoise filled with lemon curd and frosted with an orange buttercream, and decorated with candied orange peel from Provence. One year I made the lemon curd from scratch, using, you said, every goddamn pan in the house, and please, for Christ's sake next year buy a jar! My gift to you would usually be something blue: that aquamarine stickpin I designed when you turned 47, your birthstone's limpid beryl beauty so much like your eyes, or that Lorenzini shirt, the shade of a Tuscan sky, with every buttonhole stitched in a different whimsical colour. You adored that shirt, and wore it constantly, the pumice of your two o'clock shadow abrading its collar to shreds. Some years a book -- "The King Of Instruments" still sits on the glass coffee table; or a recherche CD, or a Novello edition of a Bach transcription. Last year I was stupefied with gin and stayed in bed the whole day, occasionally listlessly getting up and picking out the anthem from the 4th Saint-Saens concerto with one finger on the dusty Steinway grand, with truly voluptuous masochism, crying until the skin around my eyes was raw. This year, as sober as the mohel at a bris, (and quite liking the way it feels) I will go to hear a poet read at Harvard Books, and eat a caesar salad. I've nearly lost a stone of what I'd gained -- for a while there some of your things fit me, and I felt like you. It wouldn't have surprised me, if, shaving one day, I found that my eyes were blue, and my nose smaller and elegantly perfect, and that my chin had developed a deep round cleft, sexy, but quite hard to shave. Oh my love please be assured that I would most certainly still need you, and deem it an honour supreme to feed you, had you awakened this March 22nd, and turned 64. Judge Bryan Appleyard’s comments: “I really wanted this to win as I love the way it kind of sneaks its way into poetry. At first you think the lines could be prose, but, on second reading, their gentle, insistent rhythm asserts itself. It was going fine until the line ‘with truly voluptuous masochism’ which is self-consciously ‘poetic’ in the way the rest of the poem is not. And then the ending simply doesn’t work.”


MASKED ARTWORK *Elizabeth DiBenedetto* (Mosaic Musings) With artist's palette, brush and hues in hand she decorates the drabness of the day -- thin dabs of sanguine on an ashen land, soft strokes conceal what she will not betray. The doctors canvassed charts, discussing test results; a darkish blot had showed when scanned, a teardrop shape -- and still she paints her best with artist palette, brush and hues in hand. She hides discolorations of her life by touching up the downs, a bit of spray, then casting shadows with a shaping knife. She decorates the drabness of the day to filter out the fading tints of sin in youthful days. A woman in command, when strength and courage were immersed within -- thin dabs of sanguine on an ashen land. Her gallery is now a storage shed of artwork which will never be displayed -- each dappled bloom now lives among the dead; soft strokes conceal what she will not betray. Judge Bryan Appleyard’s comments: “Brilliant use of a tricky form and very refined, silvery language. It doesn’t quite carry me through and there are occasional lapses – ‘A woman in command’ and ‘filter out’ feel wrong. But very fine writing.”


About the InterBoard Poetry Competition Archive of IBPC Winners