| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
five ways you dreamed the world would end
Tripp Howell
(The Atlantic Online)
one)
with a traffic jam,
in an ellipse and not an exclamation,
every person on earth
trying to escape the facelessness
of a warm cloudy day in september,
sitting still with eyes searching
like treed prey or starving prostitutes
on deserted streets
until one driver leaves his wheel
and jumps off a bridge
to show everyone how it is done
two)
a recall is issued on everyone
who is not you and they begin
disappearing one by one by one
until your loneliness swallows
the ocean, the land,
the last cloud
in the sky
three)
you are put in charge of the committee
that oversees the constant survival of the planet,
you stay out too late celebrating and oversleep
on your first (and last) day on the job
four)
some god with a gambling problem
puts it up in a game of poker,
feels good with three kings
until some creature with a woman's head
and a shark's body turns over
five aces and flashes a toothy grin
five)
it's late summer, you're five years old again,
you're crunching leaves beneath your feet
waiting for your dad to get home from work
and tell you a story, show you a magic trick,
but he's in his car across town, sitting in traffic,
cursing, opening his car door, and stepping onto a bridge
PLANTER'S MOON
Kenneth Ashworth
(The Writer's Block)
I plant my feet in knee-high corn,
twist stalks like Krishna jerking
a top knot, toss all in the burn pile.
Now that drought has killed
any chance of harvest, the sky
stumbles in drunk with rain.
What fusarium won't wilt succumbs
to nematodes; being a planter
is enough to drive you insane.
Like the celery farmer next
county over who lost his wife
to root rot: years and years
of failed crop, sleeping in fields
with a shotgun to hold off the mice,
Pig Latin running through his brain-
He buried his children until
only their heads broke ground.
This is the time for turning under.
I cleave a worm with my spade,
watch its parts writhe and wonder
how the other half lives.
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