“Art in the Air” Poetry Contest
Winners—August 2002
Theme: Freedom
First Prize: Sophia Rivkin, Southfield, Michigan
Trespassers
Who
lives in this house,
each tree girdled
with a painted white tire,
shrubs cut in cubes or balls,
a yellow line down the driveway.
His and hers separated
near a mailbox cemented
into a stone pyramid.
Little signs ‘No Trespassers’
are trespassers
nailed to the ground.
Who, but disorderly March robins
could peck and pull dead grass,
ravage the sky
so blue could trespass
wild into a window
where a woman stands
like a marble statue
and shakes out a rug
shaped like a wing.
Second Prize: Mimi Moriarty, Clarksville, New York
Cow Dreams
Leather
brow
a mapscape of hide and hoof
on a field
waiting for a
daisy to sprout, a sweet tooth
coming on her
just a hint of
ego in her udder, simple grains
simple heart
this radical cow
afloat on an antique oaken barge
down the Hudson
moos past West Point
and other highlights on the tour
swishes her tail
above the water line,
each fly an unexpected intrusion
on a bovine holiday
the breeze, a
reminder of the grassy fields upriver
daisies for desert
while her sister
soars over the moon, ambitious
as an astronaut
Honorable Mention: Marjorie Rommel, Auburn, Washington
Who needs you?
When I
get really old
— say 103 — and wise,
I will stay up all night alone
in the moonlight, tending
red cabbage roses that tumble
over my trellised gate.
I will paint my house white,
name it something foolish.
I will have a wide porch, a roan
rocker, & a solid oak door
to keep out those who would
snipe at my bad habits,
& I might keep a cat —
a gray tabby aloof,
independent as you
have grown. I might even,
occasionally,
let the cat come in.
Honorable Mention: Renny Golden, Chicago, Illinois
Homecoming: After the War
for Marta Benavides
You left El Salvador because Oscar Romero
was the last man you could trust
because the Party lied
because Christians scandalized you
because you saw your coffin.
Home now, beneath mango trees in your mother’s garden
parrots and macaws perch in emerald light.
When they speak they whisper:
cuidado be careful.
Your city is all murmur, a convalescent ward.
The cathedral leans above the park’s leafy shade
wary as a mule beaten too often,
its new mural a gloss that does not hide
pocked holes where bullets nailed its walls.
You leave for the campo at dawn
ride the bus with weary peasants
holding children, baskets of dried fish,
sacks of beans, a calabash of lilies.
You watch sparrow hawks dip maiz fields,
hides of oxen, gold in the morning light.
Cashew and mango groves lie beneath volcanoes.
Along the road white crosses.
You want to light candles
for this cur of land that greets you
the mongrel that took knife and bullet
crawled off whimpering, torn-up,
refused to die.
At Nuaizalco you step into a coastal
heat that slicks your blouse to your breasts.
A lost village of Indios
bronze faces, midnight eyes.
Your compas.
This is where you build your community clinic.
Your cot and books furnish a lonely room;
a botanist’s garden stretches over the patio
a tumble of pink hibiscus.
Herbs for fever, intestinal flu, lumbago, cancers.
This is the path of those who walk
corn rows in ragged pants,
whose abuelas still have traje
packed in myrtle between cloth rags.
Children of la matanza are your future
as you ride the bus talking with peasants
who say God willing when pain is too much.
But you are tired of this God of sorrow,
tired of revolution.
You turn to the filthy bus window
where volcan Izalco keeps vigil
under a fleece of clouds.
You argue with God:
Listen, I am sick of crucifixion,
I am sick of resurrection, too.
(Excuse me Monsignor, I know this
is blasphemy to you, but now that
you see it all, don’t you agree?)
The bus lumber past fields of bones
while you tell off God.
You are just warming up.
Honorable Mention: Barbara Crooker, Fogelsville, Pennsylvania
What You Want
is more
than refrigerator art,
more than making sack lunches.
You want a bad boy for a lover,
one who’d make a lousy husband, a wanderer
on a Harley, and you with a mini-van.
What you want has high cholesterol,
lots of sodium, and no fiber; no 7 grain
sprouted hearth-baked added-oat-bran.
Bring on the heavy cream.
What you want comes in five flavors,
and all of them are chocolate:
milk, mocha, alpine white, semi-, bittersweet.
What you want never goes on sale,
or, if it does, by appointment only,
5th Tuesday, dark of the moon, Scorpio rising.
Is never found at garage sales.
What you want
would feel so good on your skin
you’d never wear clothes again.
What you want is not found
at K-Mart, naked in the blue light.
What you want isn’t canned by Campbell’s
or baked by elves; it must be flown in from Rome
or brought from Alaska by dog sled.
What you want isn’t played on AM radio,
borrowed from public libraries.
Isn’t found in Webster’s or Roget’s.
Never gives double coupons, green stamps, rebates
or money-back guarantees;
gains no interest, gathers no moss.
published in
River City,
1999
Honorable Mention: Gwen Hart, Mankato, Minnesota
Paradise
The bicycle was awful —
a no-speed piece of junk
with two mismatched tires,
a rusted pink frame,
and a cracked banana seat
smeared with huge, faded flowers,
yellow and blue,
bound by silver duct tape.
It had a basket — white with blue
and red and holes woven right in.
I was convinced Marsh Brady
wheeled it to the front curb,
leaned it against a trash can
the day she discovered boys.
I said I hated it,
but rode it anyway,
rode it every night,
pumping hard up the hills
of a street named Paradise,
thirteen
and determined to fly.
