| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
NOIR
Jim Corner
(Desert Moon Review)
Upstairs, a paneless window
faced the lawn toward the gravel road.
Elm shadows taunted the room
in the half-light. Corners strewn
with newspapers, clothes stiffening
in the dust, never worn.
In the woods behind the barn,
where Jack was put in the moon
for burning brush piles on Sunday,
a rain crow cooed a warning
of showers on this sticky summer day.
The field beyond, where the Progfeld boys
chased me home.
Dingy tents, patched with denim
and magenta tape, the berry pickers,
gypsies, roaming the farmland.
What magic spun within the walls,
cast upon us by night?
The wasp stinger I found on the sill,
still alive, stung my finger. Beside
it, the mysterious skin, wrinkled
and wet. Father said it was a beetle’s
shelter shed just after its mating.
My reoccurring dream of the Eddy Bridge,
white locomotive steam so volatile to face,
yet intermittently cleared. What was under
the bridge? I remember; strange, Mom does not.
I laid on a quilt of patched wool and velvet
near the window, beside me a girl of five;
night train rattled the pane, shook
the wall, passed into the planet’s shadow.
TABULAR CONJUNCTURE
Linda Goin
(Café Utne)
Canned peas and a slab of tofu
designed to resemble beef
nestle together on a plastic plate so green
the peas vie for attention.
A homely fruit jar filled with ouzo
stands within an inch of this simplicity.
At my fingertips lie three books:
one is opened to a Tiepolo fresco;
another is opened to the American constitution
(Amendments, Article I, about dressing
and redressing grievances);
and yet another is opened to smiling irises.
This last book is leather, with imperial stamps
that flatten edges along gilt-rimmed pages.
I push that book away, afraid.
I’ve watched irises wilt.
Tofu, peas, more ouzo, please.
Tell me that Tiepolo was rich
when he was born, tell me that he inherited
Raphael and Veronese. Tell me, books,
how he created this woman, bare-breasted,
astride an alligator, her eyes focused
on the architect of Würzburg,
a dandy who lies straddled over a barrel
(filled with echoes, no doubt).
All the musicians lean to the left,
and all their instruments lean to the right.
Tiepolo created a slippery surface,
where he realigned feathers, ostriches,
camels, and disdainful, dark-skinned women
with his own allegory for heaven.
Two peas escaped, but no damage done.
The amendment is splattered
with a tad of tofu and A-1 sauce,
but the lines are still too legible.
That book will stay open ’til it dries,
but Tiepolo is shelved
with other books about memory,
creativity, intelligence, and goals,
including something about DaVinci,
and something else about horizons,
where these lines should land,
high or low, or right in the middle.
Just like Goldilocks, heh? Or was it the bears?
The bears. Chicago. Liquor store down the road.
The leather irises stay, shut, their smiles bloom
forever purple between slim gold rims.
SEEING MARGOT
Ron Lavalette
(The Melic Review RoundTable)
Two or three times a month or more
I tell her about being rounded up
for extermination, or running out of pills
in the middle of the night. Sometimes
she waits patiently while I caress my lies
or opt, instead, to spend my time describing
the baby I found frozen on the lawn. Sometimes,
following her upstairs, I think about how I
left Dr. Zimmerman high and dry, owing him
thousands and thousands of dollars
and I remember Trudy back in Brattleboro,
watching me leave and asking if I’d gotten the cure.
Yesterday I let my watch read 11:50 all day long.
Late in the morning, something like snow came
spitting down, overwhelming my wipers.
Crossing Main near midnight, I saw Margot
through the windshield. I wanted to get out
and tell her that I’ve lived before, tell her
that the exterminators are coming around
to gather us up again, that I need to see her now
for an hour or so, that I need to have some coffee
right away, that I need to take my pills again
before I go home and scrape the baby off the wet grass.
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