You can’t hear my voice, thousands of hands away,
smoke-shred and husky, broken as knuckles.
Boy, I’ve punched through pine and ribs, shouted
down the black mountain, bled on concrete, stone
and shoals of snowy paper. Today, there’s a screw-
topped winter in my backpack, made of glass.
I sip from it when your telephoned voice cuts me
backward to your first clear word, your first
poor Christmas. I don’t forget how your new fingers
gripped my wrinkled shirt, your birth-scars, your fear
of water and the loud sound. My hands wring circles
around this cold green bottle while your hands shape
crooked snowmen, frozen daddies. Warm,
they reach and touch your mother’s face.
Soon, and I’ll be there, you’ll hoist your own pack,
my boy, strike hard into a greening world.
Judge Patricia Smith’s comments: “I was pulled headfirst into this tale of a repentant but hopeful father and his longed-for son—I wanted more, craved more, but I don’t believe that was a shortcoming of the poem. I enter every poem hungering for a tale, and when that tale is as terse and straightforward as this one, I feel slighted. But I also feel that somewhere, in that rollicking parallel universe where the wishes of wordsmiths are paramount, the lives of these two people—
especially the father, whose trek homeward is already scripting in my head—go on well beyond the poem.”
18—AGAIN Cherryl E. Garner
(South Carolina Writers Workshop)
Big-lipped mincing — mind's eye —
that perfect Brown Sugar bass
boot thump at the light — only
my plasticchrome volume button
on the stock FM, black toggles,
turned me, 18-up.
Only cross winds in car cabin,
blue-shine Chevy, carried best
shrilly teeny angst, atomic-rocket
wrench, the turn of menses
into red power in free air
and wild, skin-pocked riot.
Judge Patricia Smith’s comments: “As someone who is trying (with varying levels of success) to reverse a reputation for rampant wordiness (not to mention sudden spates of alliteration), I’ve always envied conciseness that embraces huge vision. This little poem roots the reader squarely in a time and mindset; each little line is dense with atmosphere. And ‘...the turn of menses into red power...’ Amazing.”
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