Second Place Winner, November 2006 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Second Place Winner, November 2006

THE MURDERER NEXT DOOR *Steve Williams* (Wild Poetry Forum) 1. In my dark infancy are rooms of infra-red, blankets of sound-proofing that hide an infant’s cry. Inside asbestos skin, I hear blood pulse through my temples like heated air through stainless ductwork, the whir of advancing film inside my camera skull. I dig blood-rusted nails into my ear canal, scrape the grit of scabs, try to free myself from the deep noise--like ants in their burrows. 2. I followed him to Idaho, found another job cutting hair. He drove me out into the wilderness, one of the places at the ends of gravel, lays me on the hood of the car. Afterwards, all I remembered was the river hiss, the rush of blood between wooded banks. It was a long walk back. 3. It doesn’t take this one long before a lean of the shoulder into my breast, the shift of an elbow grazes my crotch. They all think they can hide under the cape as I snip away at their hair. Close below his very clean ear (some ears are like old snot rags), I concentrate on the slight movement of the artery, a tube of spit, sausage of sewage, exhaust fumes trapped in a wine bottle, tornado of voices screaming to get out. I want to take these scissors, and dig out the sound, the ear wax, break it free of the darkroom, expose the negative, become the photograph. He leaves me a twenty dollar tip. Judge David Kirby’s comments: “If you’re the kind of person who picks up the newspaper and feels hungry when you read a story about poverty and panicky when you’re reading war coverage, then this is a poem for you. Its keynote is deep complicity: how no man or woman is an island, how we all partake in the pathology as well as the splendor of daily living. The voice here is that of a fan of sorts, a student of human nature who looks at the ugly as well as the merely good and bad and takes it all in offhandedly, that is, with a nonchalance that borders on grace.”


About the InterBoard Poetry Competition Archive of IBPC Winners 3rd Place Winner, November 2006