| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
| Honorable Mentions, June 2008 | |
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SPIRIT CATCHER Catherine Rogers (Poets.org) What do you do when it’s full? I ask the proprietor. She frowns. She obviously thinks I’m not serious. Most people don’t have that many evil spirits visiting their house. The glass orb winks and twirls on its thread. How many are in there now? They don’t come here. Not to this shop. Too many spirit catchers hung in the window, too much lucky incense adrift in the still air. Runes and stones. I take up an amethyst, sure to protect against drunkenness, a gift for the dissolute. But what if––? She’s doing the books. What if they foment a demon revolution? What if the last one in is a rotten egg? What if the shell cracks and leaks its malice all over the parlor? If we don’t know how many angels can boogaloo on the head of a pin, how can we number the legions of lust and envy that can cram themselves into this delicate sphere? Too risky, thanks. I step into sunlight. I’ll just have to handle my sins one at a time. Judge Patricia Smith’s comments: “One of those things that make you go ‘Ummmm....,’ a delightful, and slightly sinister, answer to a question we all wish we’d asked.” |
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FLOOD Richard Evans (MoonTown Cafe) I thought if I waited, if I left wine, small purple flowers a polished coin, if I made secret prayers and with rituals blessed the dirt that would cake your boots when you came, then you would come. I thought if I wept, if I fucked with the thought of your face masking the face of the one who has taken your place and made of my bones a terrible shrine then you would come home. And I thought if I drove my children away, and drove myself mad, and cut through my palm and bewitched the windows of your friends with my watching – or if I stayed numb, silent and orderly, beached and counting the sum of your acts with white and black pebbles, one by one – then you would come home. Eight stars out and the station is calling. Not much to eat, the clocktower is gone. And where the rivermouth was now there’s a market – the people seem surprised when it floods. Judge Patricia Smith’s comments: “The building tension, marked by a growing and ill-fated desperation, wouldn’t let me shake this one.” 
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