| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
| Honorable Mentions, May 2007 | |
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IT Carla Conley (The Critical Poet) “Life begins unless you interrupt it,” the old man said and what, inside a womb, is any kind of isn’t? There’s no room for nothingness, not anything on earth is nothing: only tiny, timid, not ready yet, but moving. Whether want attends it, still it is: it makes no matter until the metal sharpens, comes to scatter... then, the remnants leave because there is no room for lifelessness inside a mother’s womb. It wasn’t: I was disposed to disagree but then it was, though maybe it would be a cunning seahorse? Next time that we met, it had gained a head and stunted limbs and yet it maybe wasn’t -- somehow, I supposed I’d love it if it were. They found its nose and something pulsing: heart. I started looking for missing parts, each little finger crooking; each foot unfurling. What a dreadful eye -- like a raisin, baked -- are we sure that it’s alive? It tested waters just as I would do, pushing boundaries - now it was a “you” to whom I crooned as it paddled around the place: here be monsters. Soon there was a face -- Are we sure that it’s alive? When did desire, all by itself, create? When did despair, all by itself, destroy? I tell you never: life/death, plus or minus, the endeavor needs a being. We are sure it is alive but life is a pinpoint, not sure to survive. and soon there was a need to hurry out of the straitened quarters. Both of us grew stout. This small world couldn’t hold him, mama’s girth stretched tight, horizons cracking. This is birth: what starts as frail as smoke attains a crown -- his head, his little body cloaked in down -- triumphant as a king. His little hand finds my fingers finally. I finally understand. Judge Bryan Appleyard’s comments: “A dramatic meditation in being, this holds the reader with a series of gentle surprises.” |
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FIRST DATE Sally Arango Renata (South Carolina Writer’s Workshop) As I turn towards the lake I feel his glacial blue eyes sizing me up from behind. It’s not hubris, it’s a knowing, an itch at the back of my brain. He’s not my type. So why the flounce, the undulation? My hips feel the freedom to be rounder, my legs longer. I stride aware of how the peach on my toes contrasts with cerulean sandals. My body is talking to me and to him, in a swill of invisible words that will never be mentioned unless he is the one to make the first move. Judge Bryan Appleyard’s comments: “Like ‘The Sandwich Hour,’ a narrative poem of great delicacy and precision.” |
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JAYCEE BEACH Millard R. Howington (South Carolina Writer’s Workshop) If I didn’t jog north to the Dania Beach pier then I’d thread the sand dunes south to Jaycee Beach. The dune grass whipped at my legs as I pushed myself in sprints through the loose sand, then a veer over to the wetter stuff near the gentle surf and those clouds rising up like mighty white towers guarding the ocean, and tinged pink for the sunrise. I went for the coffee from an ancient canteen truck parked there under the swaying palms, and the lovely blonde lady who leaned well over to serve. Judge Bryan Appleyard’s comments: “A moment captured with something of the insouciance of Frank O’Hara.” 
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About the InterBoard Poetry Competition |
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