Third Place Winner, December 2006 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Third Place Winner, December 2006

ESCORTING A CHILD OFFENDER TO A WAKE *Derek Spanfelner* (The Critical Poet) Her body is crumpled plastic laid flat, complexion waxy. Crow’s feet mark the tendencies of her nature. Her grandson, my ward, tells me of milk and cookies, the simple tenets she upheld, unquestioned kindnesses. He wrote a poem about it Mom will read in eulogy. We meet the rest outside, who greet each other (hard-shelled and sentimental alike) in the camaraderie of grief. This child, who has shown younger cousins who is boss by stripping their underwear and ignoring their pleas, is a puffy-eyed prize in the open arms of his mother. “My oldest (of eight),” she beams to obscure relatives. The uncle auctions salvaged cars. Knuckles having earned their gold, he asks questions as one acquainted with the ease of plain answers. He offers money because “he’s a good kid at heart, always the first to help out.” I can’t tell him how the boy put his hands around their necks and threatened to kill them if they told. Instead, I note more auspicious behavior, for the man expects to run the value of therapy through his calloused fingers and know the knot will hold. I cannot tell him that no boy is a convertible. That if a dent could be smoothed, another is bound to surface; that where I work, no one is ever fixed. Judge David Kirby’s comments: “I’ll add this poem to my list as I complete my stint as judge by saying that it, like so many others, could have easily been my first choice. This is a poem that I don’t understand, though I offer my lack of comprehension as a supreme compliment. What I want to say is that this poem, like a lot of the many I have read during my time as judge, has what I call a meaningful ambiguity to it, a scary, hypnotic power which lets me know instantly that I’ll be reading it again and again and getting more out of it each time. A thriller only works if the audience is slightly behind the detective’s perceptions; if you know who done it from the beginning or if you never find out, you’ll be disappointed, but if you’re poised to shout ‘Aha!’ a few seconds after the mystery’s revealed, well, that’s art, folks. I’m confident that that’s what this poem is doing and will continue to do for me. That’s how poetry works.”


About the InterBoard Poetry Competition Archive of IBPC Winners Honorable Mentions, December 2006