Second Place Winner, December 2008 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Second Place Winner, December 2008

Aftermath *S. Shademan* (Poets.org) Yesterday, my blue fingers opened petal by petal. I lost my grip on the trapeze. My heart remained white squeezed, buried in the shirt drawer of a passed lover. Today, the scent of wet leaves pulled me out to the night’s air. I watched a silver coin trapped in the black net of bare branches. A smile started like a fountain somewhere behind my eyes, trickled down my cheeks, spread to my lips engulfing my face. Death, who has been calling me for years, from that open space between my ribs, whose soft whispers I hear, whose curled fingers I see behind my eyes luring me in, doesn’t know the day before I die I will skip through the house wearing my flannel pajamas with my dangling gold earrings. I will love every wrinkle: on my father’s cheeks on my pregnancy plans and those on my lover’s shirt. Comments by judges Hélène Cardona and John Fitzgerald: “What makes this poem really interesting and stand out is its use of heightened language, especially the poignant last three stanzas. It reels you in with very poetic lines. It feels like a crescendo, each stanza a powerful beat, and has a very strong ending.”