| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
MISE EN PLACE
Alex Stolis
(Writer’s Block)
I should have left her alone. She looked different
than before--must’ve been her hair or the way
she knocked down purity’s etiquette. She changed
the tint on her lips, told me love is at once automatic
and incongruent. I should have left it all alone--her
picturesque ideas of how mountains should melt
over the sky, the thought that Hermaphroditos
would come through the window in search of a quiet
place to rest after sex. She never understood that pain
between two people could burn words into marrow
but she was ingenious enough to remember the road
to my left hand and coy enough to lay another orchid
beside the ragged bend where there was always snow,
the only reminder seasons were ever alive. She was cold
enough to watch me struggle to grasp the time of day
and laugh when the night coughed to an empty start.
I should have been content before--when the last thing
she saw were my fingers brushing against the bedroom
wall, when the last thing she remembered was the dense
breath of winter spreading petals over a dry river bed.
Judge C.J. Sage’s comments: “I chose this poem for Second Place because I liked the back and forth play of ‘I [verb]’ with ‘She [verb],’ and because of some very interesting utterances: ‘She changed / the tint on her lips, told me love is at once automatic // and incongruent…’ ‘but she was ingenious enough to remember the road / to my left hand and coy enough to lay another orchid // beside the ragged bend where there was always snow…’ I also enjoyed the Hermaphrodites reference in this context, and I appreciated the clean, stanzaic form.”
About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
3rd Place Winner, June 2004
