Honorable Mentions, October 2007 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Honorable Mentions, October 2007

THE LAST BUS HOME *Judith Anne Labriola* (Mosaic Musings) Each day at two, I read to her, she sits there with her thinning hair in wisps around a wrinkled face. Old age has trapped her in this place; she cries at night and thinks no one can hear. A picture taken long ago is on her stand, I wonder if it’s wise to focus on the ravages of age. I see her gaze at it, then look away. At three I bring her tea and Lorna Doones, She drinks, then pats my hand and says “I love you nurse, now get my coat and purse for I must go -- the last bus home is leaving soon and there’s no time to stay here in this room!”


MILLSTONE *Kathleen Vibbert* (Pen Shells) On the steps of St. James, I’m a millstone. A love poem. A Quaker lady. Rare birds all around: tails float toward the sun with an ease that makes me envious. I leave my idols outside as Mass begins. Smell the incense; resist the urge to taste holy water take my rosary from its convenient pocket hammer down prayers from between my knuckles. Communion cuts my tongue with its straight razor. Stained glass swabs my spirit like rubbing alcohol. I leave my sins inside, emerge like oil from an olive sack. The street is dark. My bones catch on my clothes. A night heron waits. In heels, I hadn’t counted on the cobblestone: The radiant sections of motor oil and rain shapes into the heads of saints. How can I walk over them once more?


EXCHANGE *DJ Vorreyer* (The Town) Strolling a silent beach, air sharp with smell of salt and fish, I stop to uncover a hidden stone from beneath still sand and whispering surf. I turn the treasure over and over in my hand, both worn, eroded by time and weather. Green veins wind across its ochre face like meridians on a miniature globe. This moment is the whole world, flawed and stunning, cold and warm, still yet churning. Although the stone reminds me, soothes me, I toss it back with a flip of the wrist, watch it skip then sink into undulating waves of black. One may never know the trials that etch a surface, which rough edges worn smooth, which tumbling journeys now calmed, which longings brimmed to the lips then receded unspoken, washed clean like the stone, the heart, back into the waiting sea.


UNGODLY APARTMENT BUILDING *Teresa White* (Wild Poetry Forum) I wait on the stoop of a Sunday morning and never once seen nobody slicked up like Uncle Jake used to be or any lady all fancy with a hat. Why I couldn’t count one cherry nor bird to eat it just these woolies come down over their prissy pink ears and my guess is not a one was headed up to the Baptists nor the Catholics neither. Lil’ Tim had a whistle and sometimes he’d join me and give ’er a blow when the rouged-up frillies from Apartment 2-B come draggin’ out ’bout ten. Mama wouldn’t say but I knew they weren’t telling nursery rhymes to rich Mr. Black. That Tim, even he didn’t believe in Jesus so at night ’fore I settled right fine in bed, I prayed hard that those fancy ladies would see the light and now I had to add Tim too.


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