| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
DON'T YOU WANNA TAKE A RIDE WITH ME?
Deborah Corazon
(PostPoems)
Come on up,
wanna take a ride with me?
Yes you. (I write in a sexy smile)
I saw you
giving me the eye.
(oh my oh my)
Am I delighted
to have chanced this way
today?
The afternoon is looking good....
I am in control
with young and handsome
written in for the duration;
imagination is running
at breakneck speed
(I like it fast).
Wrap yourself around me
(I write)
and hang on tight
you are in for
the ride
of your life.
My fingers fly as we
round curve after curve
laughter reins free
as we scream
More more more….
But suddenly I am more than aware
of your body pressed
against mine.
(whew it sure is hot in here)
Wait where were we going?
I seem to have lost track
of the road
it doesn’t seem to matter any more
as your hands are roaming
curves on their own
(I don’t remember
writing this….)
...the scent of you, right here
behind your ear,
the taste of your neck
pure exquisite.
My fingers explore
and oh I do adore
your lack of attire.
her blouse I let fly)
I have made my way
mi hermosa, to your belt
made of snake
mmmmm what I would do
to you, if you would just
apply the brake.
...no
wait,
hold up...
Pull up I tell you,
give the keyboard back to me.
(when did I say that you
could type?)
You really
can't take me
seriously,
(I have to be home by 5:00).
This is
just a poem
and we are very nearComment from Judge Joan Houlihan: “Bold, fun, smart, sexy... very clever use of the reader as audience and poem as vehicle for runaway fantasy.”
HALF-MASTED
Sonneshein
(Moontown Café)
I cannot say I wasn’t touched.
I was.
Really, I was.
My face exploded with my own wet salt
With every glimpse of newsprint.
Every time the songs broke on the radio,
I dreaded the next words,
My heart bound in a painful pause,
Waiting.
I almost tattooed a half-masted flag
On my right calf,
Just so I’d feel something real,
So I’d snap out of the notion
That it was all a marathon nightmare,
And feel.
Really feel.
Feel,
Like the orphaned child
Whose teacher kept him after the evacuation
Of schools, waiting for his parents to show.
Feel,
Like the New Bedford firefighters
Who boarded the train to New York the day I left
For Texas,
On their way to “do their duty.”
To climb through human rubble,
Hoping to find anything,
Anything
That might make someone smile,
Anything that wasn’t
Teeth and hair and crushed cement girders,
Bone and blood and stench.
Feel,
Like the thousands of families,
The thousands of friends
Of the thousands of victims.
I wanted the pain for them.
I wanted to pierce my skin
So I could hurt in the name of the people
Who didn’t have the choice.
But just like I didn’t go
To New York
And climb around on bent rafters,
Gas mask pressed to my face,
Collecting sadness in a giant black plastic bag,
Like all of the better men and women who did,
Without regard for their lungs or their minds or
The possibility of more collapse&emdash;
I didn’t go
To the tattoo parlor
And sit in the sterile chair in the sterile room
With a sterile look on my face and no tears
While a strange, multi-colored man
Drew a permanent picture on my flesh.
I didn’t do it
Because I didn’t have the money,
But the people who it would have been for
Don’t know that.
All they know, if they can see me
From where they are,
Is that I didn’t do it.
I sat in my safe little house,
On my safe little island
Where nobody was dying,
And the air was not thick with smoke and the odor of human decay,
And all of the families were as intact
As they had been a week before,
And I watched it unfold on television
And I did
Nothing.Comment from Judge Joan Houlihan: “Tone of this is just right, gives a real sense of resignation and grief. Difficult subject; restrained and believable response.”
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
First Place Winner, October 2001
