Second Place Winner, April 2008 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Second Place Winner, April 2008 Honorable Mention, Poems of the Year, 2007 - 2008

SPRING DANCE *Brenda Levy Tate* (CriticalPoet.com) Route 22 ripples to an axle beat as the red pickup approaches. Puddles pulse, wheels veer, water arcs like a tide parting before the F-150’s tire hiss. Beer cans snicker beneath ice-wire-wink. Sleet coats cables, gone by noon. Pavement’s a mosaic — broken headlights, embedded pennies. Mouse bones crunch under Goodyear studs. First tractor out of the yard wallows with a pulmonary wheeze in muck stubble. Field’s black, twisted as abandoned shirts. An old collie three-legs it down the chain track because that’s what he was born to do. In a heifer-gnawed grove behind the loafing shed, scrabble snow crust under bare oaks; limbs scratch cloudskins. Mated robins drop sky bits onto dull moss. New melt trinkles and plishes off the gambrel-roof barn. On the porch step, farmboy smooths his trout filament between forefinger and thumb, feeds it into the Shakespeare with a handful of hope. The day flows around him — river and rock — while mother sings from her clothesline, “Fare thee well, love,” hazel gaze a salamandrine fire that burns what it touches. He listens, furrows deep as plowed dirt above his eyes; matches reel spin to wash-pulley creak. Milkroom radio chatters about foreclosures, lost soldiers and protests against a mine two counties away. Fishhook snags the little fellow’s thumb. Long driveway rasps its monotone; gravel shoulders shrug still-frozen clods into ditches. Muddy Ford swerves, bumps over brushcut lawn, halts beside a lattice arbor where rambling roses will soon explode like ruptured hearts. Woman-song stops. She turns — sliced lemon smile — carries her laundry basket, sets it down carefully. Then she straightens to confront the truck, but won’t glance at her son. Not even once. Out on bleeding earth, her husband inhales the dark diesel, whistles off-key. “This will be no ordinary April,” he assures his crippled dog. Judge Patricia Smith’s comments: “Densely atmospheric story of earthly and personal rebirth; I was particularly drawn to the poet’s daring, the deft creation of pinpoint phrasing that conjured exactly the image needed. Snickering beer cans. Ice-wire-wink. The collie actually ‘three-legs it.’ And ‘plishes.’ That is not, not in the dictionary, and it friggin’ well should be. This is like the wide, opening cinematic shot, a huge story in a nutshell, and the last line resonated in a hopeful but chilling way. Geez.” Poem of the Year Judge Kelly Cherry’s comments: “Excellent description, grounded in observed details. Dynamic verbs charge the poem with energy.”


About the InterBoard Poetry Competition Archive of IBPC Winners 3rd Place Winners, April 2008 IBPC Poems of the Year, 2007 - 2008