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Adult Poetry Winning Entries 2002 |
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1st Place
Mushroom Picker By Cecile B. Clement
It was eight at night when he sold his buckets of mushrooms to Janice waiting in her rusted pick-up sided in cardboard “Mushroom Buyer”
Next stop. moving along the supper buffet at Shirley and Bud’s his black ponytail swayed under a worn triangle of blue bandana- picking now fried chicken breasts and thighs, mashed potatoes. cabbage and green beans, lemon jello squares, angel food cake and applesauce.
All day he had picked Morels from Montana’s mountain earth, fired black from last September’s flames. He reeked smoke weary, shuffling along the line- faded jeans were shredded above loose flip-flops, his mustard colored shirt streaked with smoke smears as if an artist tested charcoal widths and lengths before drawing on his canvas.
The pickers skin is dark from sun and ashes and assimilated genes, eye and mouth lines crinkled as he pinch tasted a biscuit letting his thin mustache catch a few crumbs. He filled his plate as he had filled his buckets in the mountains and returned for chili bean soup floating Saltines. The worker’s campsite was hare of food.
His hands and feet crusted with quick and dead forest tags in greens and ashes- a soldier ending mountain battles staggering out at night. Butter and gravy assaulted mashed potato hills.
From our table I lower my eyes in praise of a day’s work of mushroom pickers, wishing to know more story.
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2nd Place
Sapphire Mountain Sisters By Cecile B. Clement
Coy daughters of the Rockies loll along their river valley, gentle purple blues and dotted greens of pines.
The sisters’ peaks tease clouds- floating proud with precious mists- for baths in rain or snow to how to thirsty streams draped across their curves like lacy shawls.
Nymphs hold their namesake jewels tucked inside deep pockets snugly closed- releasing dearest gems reluctantly.
The sisters overlook toy villages- doll houses fenced for piebald horses, grays and browns and blacks, sheep like the floating clouds and cows to milk and eat. Lilliputians plant and harvest hay while truck Explorers play Monopoly on roads around the mother river basin.
Across their valley, the Sapphire sisters must admire their rugged brothers of the Bitterroots- siblings watching energies by stars and their own sun burning up as Rainbow trout flow through their veins. 3rd Place
Across the Hudson By Clay Waters
an orderly skyline without memory
of two needles swollen with blood and bone shattering
leaving a smooth arm on a numb body
I pluck a tall hair off my own so not to forget that absence is pain |
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Pontius by Starlight By Jean A. Morrison Honorable Mention
Sweet Jesus, if you were alive I would Forgive you. You did no less for me And some say more. You are the lamb And lovely. And with all my hands I would Carve your name on shepherds who were happier Or less intense. Why shouldn’t I be glad To help a stranger! The trouble is you are infirm, And anyway you were not right to let them Hammer out your soul! I mean I doubt, sir, Whether we could drink a beer. When I consider what I could have done, If I had been my father’s son My beer grows tepid. |
Grandpa Wilson Waits Upon His Disk By Cecile B. Clement Honorable Mention
Grey beard—tobacco stained a bit—to boots, condensed on floppy disk—gray plastic square of plots, sub-plots, with kith and kin computers his country life with megabytes and flair.
He waits on track as coffee steams in mugs of mornings, Grandma’s baking biscuits, pork, cornbread. He saddles Ned, alert for plugs and lights, like wine with bubbles under cork.
Still Grandpa waits, he hears a mockingbird outside high-density, he crumbles bread into his buttermilk, feels Windows, heard tornadoes roar in DOS above his head.
At last the magic button activates— our Gramps, alive again, is sucked into bits through screen and whirring print, emancipates his yarns, rides Ned across the page, -- true grit.
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Independence Day, New Orleans, 2002 |
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By Brenda Finnegan Honorable Mention
Our three granddaughters slept in their new rooms last night, at least two of them did. The little one, age two, snuggled next to her mother in this double shotgun on Octavia Street, the first house our daughter ever bought.
Her father and I, tired room hanging ceiling fans and endless trips to Harry’s Hardware on Magazine, tossed on the fold-out sofa in an unfamiliar room with light streaming through the glass transom.
Today, the Fourth of July, we awakened early, prepared coffee in a new pot, resumed cleaning, helped paint the front doors the bright pear green her best friend (and decorator), picked out burgundy, much too drab on a gray house. |
At his house, I’m sure he is enjoying smoking in every room, coffee (or drink) in hand, no longer subjected to cold stares when he lights up; no more dirty diapers, dirty dishes, dirty words spewing back and forth.
This afternoon, he picked up the girls in his Jeep for a barbecue, beginning a series of Wednesday rituals that divorced couples dance to when marriages and families divide.
We waved goodbye. She went inside, anxious to hang curtains and unpack books, while I stood a moment at the freshly painted doors and watched them drive away.
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