| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
REQUIEM Notes
Brian Long
(Melic RoundTable)
Once, among the high grasses
of the birthing-field, you wondered
if the thrush knew lyrics to music
she has carried since first flight,
if the glide given the roll of her throat
sounds from a place untaught to her, its pith
long vanished with the dulling of the eggtooth,
the rend of the blue shell hush. You asked
what words I thought she might be singing,
and for weeks I listened, unriddling.
Last evening I watched her kneel
at a halo of string and drybrittle vine,
tend a trinity of songs kept secret there
and rhythmned to the beat and taper of soon-
rising wings. I saw them strain into the dark
of her fauces where the blind worm remembers
to them the old dust hymns, the red clay songs
patterned from the lay of the earth, epiphanies
of sylph-hollow voices sung from the rot.
This morning their trilling woke me
from other worlds, and I stumbled
into my own to find you staring
toward me in the fog of the mirror.
You lay your palm against mine,
and we cleared the faces of the glass,
tilted its frame to better angle
the light; I imagined you walking
toward the gates, blinking. You
reflected in the fluorescents
for the breadth of a dampened moment,
but faded when my son was brought to me,
was nested in the bend of my arms.
He pats at my mouth, grabs my tongue,
blathers and coos strange songs to me,
flame-blue eyes God-deep with sudden
questions. I lean to whisper, hair tumbling
willow and dark, to find you humming
somewhere beneath the heat of his breath.
Though we do not know the words,
he and I, we sing you back
from the silence of the stones,
back from the rift of the dead
still crumbling, from the soundless
settle of the long cold.
GORDON
Sandy Steinman
(Salty Dreams)
She lies.
Swears never again to disturb him,
yet tonight, tiptoeing silent downstairs
in the dark, everyone in bed,
she digs him up, inspects him,
a month after her brother had soaped,
and bathed him in a sink of scalding water.
Scabby knees itch,
rest on the cool ground
as small fingers unearth
Gordon from his tiny grave
below the forsythia
near the splintery sand box
and the swings.
Fluted shell intact, the head lolls
on her index finger with its torn nail.
She strokes him as when she'd placed
him in that soil, wonders when God
will take him away or change him
into somebody else.
PROSTHETIC LOVE
Rus Bowden
(Poets.org)
Your leaving takes my legs
out from under me.
No longer
may I walk with you,
my leaping days through.
I devise wooden pegs
on stumps
and hobble off balance
whenever I think I see you.
I reach for you,
arm stubs in thin air.
If you were in front of me,
you would feel me bump
and my weight
as I topple
face down.
I install hooks and turn,
gut wrench at night,
you not really there.
My heart tears out
through all this.
I try replacement,
but it is too tricky.
I hear or read your name
and cannot compose myself.
From nowhere comes your voice,
smile for a kiss and I know
I have lost my head.
I would be nothing
if it were not
for phantom sensations.
DU
Janet Kenny
(Wild Poetry)
A wisp of old woman,
curved like a scythe,
tottered to me as she
fussed her shopping,
her walking stick hooked
on her chopstick wrist.
She spoke to me then
in a dried leaf voice.
Inaudible there
in that busy street,
swept by rude gales
from passing trucks.
I leaned closer to hear:
Mein eyes not gut.
time for bus, ven comes it?
“Which bus do you want?”
She smiled, shook her head
then sang to herself
-- and somebody else,
in? not German. Yiddish --
“Which bus?”
She leaned towards me,
her tiny claw reached
to stroke my face.
Du she said.
Du
HIGH TEA
Christina Fletcher
(Pennine)
It is time to take tea: Earl Grey
(iced, with thinly sliced lemon)
or steaming Lapsang Souchong.
The guests are seated in the garden:
it is uncharacteristically warm.
Yes, and the air heavy with lilac.
His plumed helmet, sword and K
were boxed long ago. There are
no servants. His wife will pour.
Later, when they are settled,
he will speak of Lamu: the hiss
of baboons on a dry dirt runway;
cold showers in Petley's,
where he sketched dhows
on Sunday afternoons.
They will forget pain and pensions,
cataracts, angina and the irritation
of drafting wills.
The Chardonnay (perfectly chilled)
comes from a cool climate
where grapes ripen slowly.
If pressed, he will recall high tea
with the Sultan of Zanzibar;
the delicate question of flags.
K: a knighthood
Lamu: an island/mainland (depending on the season) on the coast of Kenya
Dhows: ships common in the Indian Ocean
SWIVE THE LUBBERS
Josef Koudelka
(Writer's Block)
All I have is this.
Stop looking for anything
else. No winking
metaphors or zipped-up
simile. No birds,
no rocks, no trees.
The title came to me
last night. Nothing else
happened. I didn't
make love to a roan mare
dressed in a shadow.
My dead father
didn't appear
speaking in tongues.
I have grown weary
of waxing poetic.
A good title.
Nothing more. Let the poets
turn nothing into bliss.
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
First Place Winner, June 2001
