InterBoard Poetry Competition

THE SNAPPER
      Jenni Russell
      (MiPo)

1.

Under the green one-lane suspension bridge,
a snapper naps on a large rock
close to the bank, cold brown
ripples surround its shell,
large as a round tabletop for two.
It stretches its neck west toward the sun
while tucking in its limbs.

2.

“Isn’t that an awful thing?”
Mother pours a half pot of coffee
down the drain and fills the pitcher
to make another. “Who found him?”
Grandmother wants to know.
“Jeremy Lashomb saw him swaying from the bank,
thought it was a dummy at first, a practical joke.”
She adds how he was fishing for bullheads.
Grandmother crumples her paper towel napkin.
“How did he climb those rails without falling
in such a state of mind?” She wonders aloud.
“Hung himself.” Mother says spilling
a tablespoon of coffee grounds. Grandmother sighs,
“Isn’t that an awful thing.”

3.

Past the pink motel on the corner
where Bob Jr. met his secretary
on Thursday afternoons, past
the nameless graveyard
with headstones sinking into the earth
and moss and grass grown over the dates…

1705-17something. Past
the overpass with a rusty cylinder core, past
Bob Rickard’s, who made me “Rootin Tootins”
for weeding his garden—a concoction of 7-Up
and strawberry Kool-Aid, past
the green one-lane suspension bridge
where a seventeen year old boy
hung himself when I was ten,
(the first dead body I’d ever seen)
and I watched as they lowered him.
Time dilated in those few minutes—stuck, so
that the green one lane suspension bridge
always has a body oscillating like a stopwatch
and a crowd mesmerized on the shore.
For a moment, we all look away
when the snapper wakes up and hears our voices,
hushed, excited. It tucks in its limbs,
stretches its neck, dives.

Judge Anthony Robinson’s comments: “‘The Snapper,’ although perhaps the most ‘standard’ poem here, compelled me with its narrative. I’m very hard to compel with straight narrative, but this poet took a situation that could have easily yielded a tired, hackneyed poem and turned it into something fresh, and a little chilling.”

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About the InterBoard Poetry Competition
Archive of IBPC Winners
2nd Place Winner, November 2004

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