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InterBoard Poetry Competition
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Third Place Winner, October 2010
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GOD WAR
      T. Obatala
      (About Poetry Forum)

In one short instance,
in one short breath
I kill all the names

of any of the gods.
The god of the tight-lipped
father, the god of the smoke

in the jelly jar, the god of ‘Who shot
J.R.,’ the god of the blackest man, even
the god of the secretary on Dixie Highway,

and like these gods even you must submit
to a final authority. A human being might straddle
another one for years or even a lifetime but they

are nothing like a god and all of the babies who
managed to make their way out
know this.
Comments by judge Paul Lisicky: “An appealingly sassy poem that makes use of a dark litany to bring about an unexpected ending.”

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