Feb IBPC winning poems

1st Place

Stovetop
Sarah Sloat
Desert Moon Review

Stovetop

the girls have grown so much
the ceiling shatters
kitchen chairs collapse

but a quart of milk stays simple
it will do for brewing
custard in the sweet hereafter

recital of steps so few
even a daughter might muster
a cloudburst of milk

mudslide of sugar
egg albumen expanding
like a most virginal flower

stovetop, slop shrine
nothing special about
stewing, ruminating

over smoke in the kitchen
why, because
the mind simmers

like melancholy it boils over
and what else can one do
up to the elbows in flour



2nd Place

high altitude in the lips of clams
Cy Street
Splash Hall Poetry

high altitude in the lips of clams

i saw a buttercup blinking
above a florentine door
hotel de lanzi
the street ran empty
a ghost biker passed thru
rubesco bottles patiently wait
dimly lit buildings
drank the dew
dreamed
expressing concerns privately
off camera
an interview with the stars
thru flashbacks
criterion for thunder and rain
overlapping darkness
a passage to where
beneath the bench
a shadow
an earthy
and stone faced night sky
a pitch black invitation
what is your name
do you unknown

i was taken by a storefront
uttering evidence of solitude
free from the baker s wood oven
another song writing tourist
an angry angel singing
some soul take
war cries
pledges to speak up
a rusty harmonica
a picture off the shelf
another glass of aspirinio
i begin to remember myself
from the eighteenth century
a white wig i think
two years ago
when i bought the photo
smoking my spirit
a burning box
now resting on the eastern wall
facing the ocean
and a million barrels a day

from the shotgun
i get lost around the corner
looking ahead
i walk away into the unseen
a red rooster
having a nap
bored by the lecture
clear creek practices
in the ancient art of tomato farming
and olive pressing
i remember my introduction to panic
and high altitude in the lips of clams
glazed with the ocean floor
and lost phone numbers



3rd place

The Gospel According to David Copperfield
Nathan McClain
Inside The Writer’s Studio

The Gospel According to David Copperfield

At six, Jesus drapes a velvet cape
over broken chair legs, curls his fingers
and yells Abracadabra in Aramaic.

Mary applauds the dove of sawdust beneath.

John lowers Jesus into Jordan’s
backyard pool. He emerges and yanks
quarters from the mouths of inflated goldfish.

Jesus dunks his hands in stone water pots
filled to the brim, pomegranate fog
spreading like Easter egg dye.

Peter hands out fliers for a three-day show
in Galilee. It reads: “Jesus, the Magnificent:
to wake sparrows from sleep

and saw Death in two! Watch as he parts
the flaming halves like the Red Sea!
(and of course, Jesus nails every trick)

For the grand finale, he’ll make himself
vanish from a pad-locked coffin
and reappear off-stage in a sequin-

crusted suit. Watch the women wail and faint
as He guesses the cards they choose.
And as a special encore—Jesus levitates!”



1st Honorable Mention

Of a Journal Partially Smeared from a Summer Flood
Yolanda Calderon-Horn
Desert Moon Review


August is too hot to be sexy outdoors.
Blue strip indicates a new period.
New art is forming.

I become a fossil on the spare bedroom carpet
shaped out of time I spent being petrified and eager,
but fire-trucking to the bowl makes it
impossible to stay stoned.

Because he’s baptized in my water,
there’ll be deliverance. He?
When did I conceive this notion?

He’s settled among my springy pillars
and has become my daily meditation.
I will look fastidiously after him. I hope he looks
a little like me to pull me out of grownup context.

I gobble and gobble chili-con-carne
as the legs of October rest high on a timetable.
He does not seem to mind my new weakness.

I have never been equally full and hungry
of/for an individual so little, so huge.

I barely sleep as I go from my right side,
back, and then left side.
He crashes comfortably: sleeps well.

His mutiny through my Nile absorbed
an entire day.

Upon delivery, a poem
that would jam in my belly soared
to epistles baby-bluing the neck
of that April sky.

The hurt he caused my yielding walls
with startled fists and feet
is now an obscure backdrop
like ink that blurs colorlessness
on the page it evangelizes to.

7lbs, 9ozs of sun.



2nd Honorable Mention

Coming To Terms With Delinquency
Author: Wendy Howe
The Versifier Online Poetry and Art Forum

I wish I could say the furnace
squatting in my yard
is a sculpture by Alexander Calder.

Scrap metal drum
with pipes and faucet prone
to spit water

could be his way of defining
the housewife whose breath
is steam-hissing through bones

and a radiator of shoulder blades
that stands nonchalant
letting a stray breeze
shrug off the dust.

That would make its presence
significant, a work of art
to contrast the silent poise
of stones and wide-sleeved pine
bending like a geisha to serve tea.

I can only say the furnace lingers
because a plumber honored
half his contract. He installed
a new system and neglected
to haul the old one from my garden.

When it rains
water floats on the rusted surface,
birds bathe in tequila
and I become their patron saint
wearing clogs and blue denim.



3rd Honorable Mention

Villanelle on the Sky
Mitchell Geller
Desert Moon Review

The sky has many faces, many hues,
from cobalt to a pale chalcedony;
a scintillant kaleidoscope of blues.

The opal dusk surrounds a maple whose
black branches etch a haggard tracery.
The sky has many faces, many hues.

Like sequins dotting indigo charmeuse,
the constellations contrast hauntingly
a scintillant kaleidoscope of blues.

When amber and vermilion tones suffuse
a sunset blazing incandescently,
the sky has many faces, many hues.

Amorphous, dark, the scudding storm clouds cruise
across a mass of lapis lazuli --
a scintillant kaleidoscope of blues.

The heavens' lights, eternally the muse
inspire music, dance and poetry.
The sky has many faces, many hues --
a scintillant kaleidoscope of blues.



-Congrats to all winners!
The IBPC Team