IBPC -WINNING POEMS FOR JULY 2005

INTERBOARD POETRY COMMUNITY'S
WINNING POEMS FOR JULY 2005
JUDGE: AARON WELBORN



First Place:

The Mandolin
by Laurie Byro
Melic Review



Second Place:

A Meaningless Poem
by sabyasachi nag
The Writer's Block



Third Place:

Murderers
by Judy Goodwin
South Carolina Writers Workshop






The Mandolin

by Laurie Byro


I tried to tell you about the barbed wire man
and how as a kid I was frightened of that starved
hound of his, the snarl and bite of wire round
the shack that he called home. You never listen
when I am like this. You invent ways to compare me
to a mandolin, your callused fingertips wanting to strum,
to pluck my body like a string. I shake you off.

The wire of my body is being stripped from the inside
out. The lining of my spine heaves with nerves
that are taut and frayed. I tell you I am afraid.
You never believe me. Instead, your nails move back
and forth across the frets of my wrist. You play
chords on my arm, croon "Don't be afraid, hush."

You sink into me on your couch and run me through
the lush green forests of childhood. You rehearse
me on your guitar, eyes half-closed against the bright
summer moon. I study your arms as you play,
mesmerized by the clawed fingers, the rusty
glint of hair. There is a river we cross and we pull one
another along through a crooked wire fence.
We arrive skin on skin and only slightly torn.
The wire man sleeps. We replace him with this.



Aaron says...

Occasionally you come across a poem that disturbs you in
some inarticulate, private way, because it seems to have sprung from
some inarticulate, private source. With its dreamlike imagery and hint
of menace, "The Mandolin" strikes that chord with me. The barbed-wire
man and his dog establish a sinister element early on, a fear which
slowly gets transmuted into fear of another sort--the trepidation of
intimacy. The ending is richly ambiguous. What is "this" which
replaces the nightmare of the barbed-wire man? Intimacy achieved? The
physical act of love? The poem? Or something more sinister still? Like
a disturbing dream, this poem rewards revisiting over and over.




A Meaningless Poem
by sabyasachi nag

In Graz four newborns are found cold
in a freezer. Frozen in a bucket.
Blue-black under rose-garden-debris.
No one is shocked.

They hold out fists, point
fingers, shake heads at her.
Each time she birthed she despaired.
Birthed. Despaired. Each time.

Even the man whose wrists are red from her cinch
can’t remember any pregnancies. They will run
tests, tie threads. Meanwhile
the tenant who opened the freezer walks

three miles before he finds the ice cream
and relishing the taste of fresh peach in
crushed pecan notes in his diary – June 3.
'Blood hides in every apple, a moon in every blister'.


Aaron says:

Good poems often contain instructions on how to read them.
In the case of "A Meaningless Poem," we can look to the title, which
shouldn't be taken too literally. If anything lacks meaning here, it
is a world in which "No one is shocked" anymore--whether by a
freezerfuls of dead babies, or by poems about them--where all
expectations are reversed, much as the saying in the poem's final line
seems to be inverted. If we cannot face absurdity somehow, the poet
seems to be saying, we cannot react to much of life.




Murderers
by Judy Goodwin

It was my father
who cut up her credit cards,
stuffed them into the black plastic
sacks along with her lipstick
and Regal handbag,
hefted it all out into the carport
bins. On Sunday
I emptied her dresser drawers.
We were both guilty, startled
by small sounds. One night
I dreamt she returned,
raging through the house.
"What have you done!?" What
had we done? There was no going back now.
No reaching into the city dump to yank
out the trash. Her things
were turning and kneading
at the bottom of great vats,
rain soaked and loud with machinery.
We had watched the loaf of her
split, take in the rust
and waste, roll like a seal in the bay -
our muddy hands were cold
for months.




Aaron says: For a sentimental poem, "The Murderers" is refreshingly
simple and plainspoken. The catalog of detritus of one woman's life is
richly interwoven with the speaker's guilt-ridden story of gradually
getting over her death. The alternating metaphors of breadmaking and
gravedigging make for a richly suggestive and unusual elegy.