| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
MANUFACTURED QUIET
Will Roby
(Enter the Muse)
“when the one who’s faithless has
nothing more to say and the silence is
terrifying since you must choose between
one or the other emptiness.”
Stanley Plumly
We take the bigger half.
We might cut it in two
and try to make them even, but
we take the bigger half
and then we look to see who saw.
Even as the sun sets
I take big gulps from the garden hose,
keeping the coldest water for myself.
It’s terrible, the way we do
the things we do, like children
poking holes in frogs to see
the bits run out into their palms;
it’s us and God, who’s overpoked
enough. We gather stones
and bitch about the dust at night,
the cold air of the day keeps up
and takes the bigger half.
There’s the kid they cannot tell
is strung out half the night and still
he lets his heart beat on as if
it matters when he lives and dies.Judge Claire Hero’s comment: “The form of this poem, the way it meanders through this idea of ‘half’ and the contradiction of ‘bigger half,’ which strikes me as creating a similar momentum as the sestina form, as well as the note struck in the final stanza, made this poem interesting to me.”
PLEES, ARGIMIRO!
Silvia Brandon Perez
(MiPo)
Abuela Carmita was educated
in a beige convento
where dour-faced monjas
taught her all about pudor:
a senorita had to bathe
in a refajo and always
say ave marías when washing
certain unmentionable parts.
When she married Argimiro
she retained the strictures
handed down by her diosito
and never made love in daylight
lights out under cover of long sheets
and prim long virginal payamas
ten children well conceived
amidst much groping in the darkness
freshly arrived from La Habana
she went to the supermercado
with canvas bags, precursor
to ecological concerns,
saved all cans from salsa de tomate
for planting of gajitos de malanga
all rubber bands in one large Café Bustelo
washed out and aired, soil taken
from the neighbor’s garden, you did not
spend hard-earned centavos on things
you could get free, you did not do
certain unmentionable acts with your marido
that was for putas and their like in bares
and what dios joined you could not sunder,
el matrimonio was forever, a promise given
was a promise kept, through years of my abuelo’s
dancing through the carnavales with a rubia
or a pelirroja she kept her vows,
except for kisses given to the television set
when Tom Jones came to sing and gyrate...
she wanted to learn inglich to become
a citizen
paid each of us a nickel
for vocabulary,
learned to say pehnseel, plees
to write out her notes
to my abuelo, plees plees
no more mujeres, no more smoking cigarrillos,
no more juiski in the evenings,
but when the cancer took him,
52 years of matrimonio took their toll,
she talked to him each night
while watching her novelas on the tele,
shared new palabras in the inglich language,
said plees plees plees
Argimiro plees
come back to your esposaJudge Claire Hero’s comment: “Poetry, at its best, explores our ambiguous relationship with language, our desire to express the ineffable, to name the unnamable, and our fear that language is inadequate to the task. This poem, in its constant negotiating between two languages and the way to say (or avoid saying, as culture requires), deserves an honourable mention.”
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