Honorable Mentions, October 2008 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Honorable Mentions, October 2008

AWAKE *James Lineberger* (Salty Dreams) until i turned seventy i could still do it one leg crooked around the upper rung of an a-ladder extension leaning back easy arms free to hold the drill with both hands and fasten a new board covering up a raccoon hole on the fascia at the rear of the house but then then there comes a time when you struggle out of bed to discover you can’t accomplish the familiar foolhardy things you’re so accustomed to and not even your wife will applaud you now when it is she herself trying to remember to walk the dogs and your daughter coming over to mow the lawn and you learn it’s only in our dreams we have any joy in this life the nightmares lying awake same as we stretching their fucked-up knees to face the day


COMPRESSION *Linda E. Cable* (SplashHall Poetry) I was born somewhere between tank parades, and blond step tables adorned with oriental maidens standing guard at picture windows. The world turned hard and plastic and the word was white. It was lunch buckets, and fins at five o’clock, gliding through cul-de-sacs. Veterans scanned new laid sod for insurgents, seeking rest on rayon sofas, sustenance on TV tables, quiet nights and just rewards. One act plays were cast on patios, blue collar boasts of Bradley and Patton, housewives flouncing in skirts from Federals to the tune of “Love Letters In The Sand.” We seemed so pretty then, living advertisements for Amana, True Grit and American Bandstand, crayon copies of black and white movie stars. I came of age somewhere between The Mickey Mouse Club and Dallas, in the year alabaster figurines shattered with the sound of the first gun shot.


IMAGINATION OF THE DEFLATED BALLOON *Henry Shifrin* (Wild Poetry Forum) The balloon lies marooned beside a stain of a foot on an empty section of rug. Smells of burned rubber where its tip kissed a match. It had been so lonely and the breeze, so gentle. The wind’s hand lifted gracefully toward the flame, warm but too warm. The balloon leaves the moment to dream: it fills with air, rises into the clouds. Grounded fog depresses all it covers, but moving through clouds has a holy chill. The balloon populates the sky with round bodies, remembers the static lightning two bodies can rub into being — the shock that erases the space between them. Realizes movement isn’t as necessary as thought, and so it inflates a friend it knew when they clung to the same lamp post, over the happy-birthday sign and compared the size of their shadows. This balloon always darkened the ground more than others. At least it dreamed it that way.


MUSÉE DE LA RÉSISTANCE - VAUCLUSE *Adam Elgar* (Writer’s Block) “Lavez les épluchures de pommes de terre, les jeter dans l’huile bouillante. C’est aussi bien que les vraies frites.” (Wartime advice on food economy, 1942 — from a newspaper on display in the museum) In truth it nobly celebrates defeat, confronts the shame by putting it on show, tells later generations how deceit seeps into victims’ veins, makes sure we know that victors try to put a price on air and claim there never was a word for ‘free.’ Starvation is the trump card. Pommes de terre: prochaine distribution — mardi. It’s all about the lies that people tell to keep themselves afloat till truth comes back. When brutal fact says il n’y a plus de lait you have to come up with a counter-spell, revive the rage that we complacent lack. “Dissent. Resist.” What else should freedom say?


TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY* *Beverleigh Gail Annegarn* (Mosaic Musings) Arr, I say. Arr. My darling is unimpressed. He twists his face in ways I can’t imagine and growls AAAArrrrrrrrrrrgghh! just like that. Scoundrel! I love it when you talk sea dog. The rest of the day we go about calling each other “Me hearty.” At supper, he calls for grog. I tell him he’ll get slop, and like it, or I’ll have him keelhauled. He orders me to swab the decks. I tell him that’s the mate’s job. We talk about whether we want a cabin boy or girl—it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s healthy and strong enough to do the swabbing. All day we’ve imagined parrots and dirks and doubloons. On the other side of midnight, the quotidian looms like Her Majesty’s man o’ war. Tomorrow, I’ll be the one with two earrings. He’ll have none, and dress in gray. No matter; tonight we unbuckle our swashes and heave to. We rock together at anchor, dreaming of plunder, free and ferocious, all night long. *An international holiday observed annually on September 19


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