Selected by Yerra Sugarman,
author of The Bag of Broken Glass and Forms of Gone
http://yerrasugarman.blogspot.com/
1st place: Andrea L. Watson
2nd Place: Richard Palmer
3rd place Barry Denny
__________________________________________
Andrea L. Watson
Naming Ours the Altar
a sestina
Color, meaning innocence, floats
Amethyst-
Nothing can be left unspoken
If this is the altar of regret,
Let me fashion each layer, windblown,
Ring the past with forbidden's necklace.
How many stones in this necklace,
And what about the altar that floats?
I am lighting two votives. Windblown,
Wach burns memory-cut amethyst-
I wonder how you number your regret
Unspoken
sleeps in the room that knows, unspoken
purchased the crystal necklace.
Your thousand thrusts of un-regret
are a dread that floats,
like my body melting (like weight of amethyst)
you want every accusation windblown.
In the photo we are smiling, windblown;
each hour strikes unspoken
You caress my throat, flushed amethyst.
I am wearing your necklace
of fingers as darkness afloat,
my eyes are opals, starless with regret.
This jeweled mirror, witness to regret
Wind, blown
beneath a door, whispers, I want to float.
To be empty. Here is unspoken-
When you unclasped clouds as necklace,
Sky in the attic window blazed amethyst.
I do not forgive you amethyst
Without pity, there cannot be regret.
Mouth, plum, necklace:
Our shrine bleeds flame, and windblown
you wait at the top of the stairs, unspoken,
hunter's moon still floats.
Our altar of unspoken is midnight's necklace.,
Adorn me in a windblown room where memory floats.
The gem of purity is amethyst. Now, regret.
_____________________________________________
Richard Palmer
BEFORE YOU CAN WRITE "THAT POEM"
Before you can write "that poem"
You know the one,
The one that feels like powdered glass
Grinding between the bone and the blood
Before you can write "that poem"
You must first endure burning
In the ravaged emptiness
Of your grandfather's grandfather's
Unlived life
Only then,
from that unspeakable barrenness
can the man fall to the earth
and grieve
for the centuries of loss
Only then,
Can he surrender his hero's wings
For the naked grace
Of feeling his brother's hands
In his own
And the ordinary magic
Of belonging to the earth
______________________________________________
Barry Denny
Moose Field
Near the outfield fence
separating Moose Field from the back wall of Moccia's delicatessen
a patch of poison ivy grew--
we discovered when an ugly rash erupted
on Melon Head's neck and arms
after his diving catch against the Italians.
Summer mornings, leaving my parents early-
my father
having destroyed Red Army Chorus
and Paul Robeson gospel 33 RPMs suspect
contraband
dangerous
for a federal employee handling US mail
When Isarael was in Egypt's land
Let my people go
Opressed so hard
With Enos Country Slaughter outfielders mitt hooked to my belt
(A racist he turned out to be ― organizing a boycott against Jackie Robinson).
I sat
On the ground
Outside Moccia's
alone
reading
the Daily New's sports section
hanging like a salami
waiting for a buyer,
waiting to fungo
fly balls
in the outfield grass
where I ingested the breeze
where meeting of ball and glove
was gospel.
When I was 5
I was nudged
By a military police car
moving backwards
while my father
operated a radio
in a tank
in the big war
Patrick
And
Jimmy
from the candy store
and two MPs carried me upstairs to my hysterical grandmother
who thought I'd never walk again
Never to float
Like the breeze
In the outfield.
Inside my closet:
mountain of hiking boots
running shoes
ragged and sublime
fit to be tied
On a shelf:
The old mitt
Whispering remember the night in Moose field.
"Remember Chrissie"
Girl scout shoes too big even for her large feet,
she wasn't coming or going
only running
there to here
HUNGRY CHRISSIE
Treated to a roast beef hero from Moccia's.
escorted by thirteen year olds to the outfield stripped naked
"You guys are the best friends
I ever had."
As an act of defiance against a corrupt military practices, Irish immigrants pluck a nine
year old Black girl from a downtown orphanage during the New York Civil War Draft
Riots. The girl is clubbed to death. Hundreds watch.
"Jerusalem: 167 BC. The historian Josephus observes Jews on a hill being crucified for
a variety of criminal acts."
"Lookit those tittymelons."
GROPING
GROPING
I wouldn't touch
watching in the outfield
watching
the underwear.