First Place Winner, August 2003 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

First Place Winner, August 2003

THE GILLIE’S EVIDENCE
Ivan Waters
(The Melic Review RoundTable)

A gewgaw moon dangled. Midnight
over green shallows, sluice, and salt meadow.
The tide standing. I went there alone,
to the pools where

fry and smelt lie. I found the clammy creature.
Hair tortile, wreathed and red; belly
speckled
madder rose. Around her, lily leaves all splits

and tongues. Smeary carp sliding
under a gliddery
skin, horse-bruised
pink, orange and white. One fish

circled into its quick black eye. Its circumference
a baby’s arm. Bladderwrack pricked,
gullies purled. She had no pulse.
I believe I heard a cry. I am sure

we hadn’t met.
I deny these teethmarks
are mine; my mouth is clean. I swear I did not
use a blade. The sealskin found beneath

my bed; the bones, the charms,
the bridle. The letter
from the New Jersey girl to whom you will say
I once was wed,

with whom you will say
I swam. The depraved gape, the scarlet gash.
I have no knowledge of these,
the blue eyes in my flask.

Judge Claire Hero’s comment: “This poem opens with a strange and vivid description. Words like ‘tortile’ and ‘gliddery’ seem off, and yet, like Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky,’ fit the tone of the poem and create within the poem a world entire to themselves. And then this description moves toward a frightening revelation. In the last three stanzas something is being revealed that is strange and creepy, that crawls out of the poem like a shabby beast caught out of the corner of our eyes, denying the denials of the speaker, and this momentum, this undercutting of the voice, this latent violence and sublimation, is what makes this poem truly successful.”