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First Place
The Boys of Ho Chi Min
by Jerry Craven
Canyon TX
Night fell to thunder clouds and Charlie
driving mouse deer through
tree ferns and thickets of bamboo.
Below the hill and durian tree,
we heard their hooves knock stones
then tangle trip wire mines
to burn our breath
with flaming fur and bones.
Nightmare fog fell hot and damp,
lightning spiked trees in neon lines,
and we rained rifled death
upon beetles and frogs below our camp.
In jungle heat the following day,
among dead deer, we found three boys
of Ho Chi Min with faces like broken toys
steaming with grubs into leafmold clay.
 Honorable
Mention
A Murder of Crows
by Lauren Jedlan
Chalmette, LA
Against the
ponderous doors
of a newly
fashioned church,
a gnarled
elm casts
a somber
shadow.
Dislodged
from ancient woods,
crows have
come to nest
in hordes
amidst its massive,
twisting
boughs.
There,
perched above the walk,
unwanted
guests,
they long
for what is lost;
then rise,
forlornly,
in the sky —
black as
incense --
in
search of God. |
Second Place
The Title of This Poem
by Timothy Russell
Toronto OH
The title of
this poem itself
resembles the
skyline along
any number of "Canlield-Poland
Roads,"
where the local
winner of a Walt
Whitman
look-a-like contest
sometimes holds
a cardboard sign
advertising
what he will do for food,
and the local
sparrows
glean toasted
insects
from the
grilles of parked cars.
Fluorescent
signs flicker on
against the
Prussian blue sky,
its rim gone
coquelicot.
A bewildered
moth strays away
from its
delirious brethren
orbiting each
light
above the
parking lot
and clings to a
brick
in the facade
of Barnes & Noble.
A couple in the
window
sits in the
halogen sheen
of a ceiling
light. The two of them
earnestly
discuss the contents
of a book
neither will read.
A gleaming
sedan
wiggles
substantially
across a speed
bump.
The
conglomeration of symbols
clamoring for
attention
atop this
irregular pylon
might as well
spell out
"the pursuit of
happiness." |
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Third Place
Moving Wall
The Traveling Replica of The National
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
by Jerry Craven
Canyon TX
It gave birth to a golden moon, this black
wall spiked with flags and smeared with names.
Behind me clouds bled into darkness, holding
the last ruby kiss of the sun, while the moon
emerged from the wall.
Boys, uniformed, little more than children,
gave programs to those drawn to the moving wall.
It sat on Texas prairie, on buffalo grass
and careless weed mowed to stubble, a strip
of sidewalk before it and the golden moon behind.
A rope fence directed us to the end of the wall,
past a sign: "No food, No drinks, No pets."
We had no food, we who walked beside the names
the names, the names; we had no drink
but white print on a black, black wall;
we had no pets on this autumn prairie
where a moon moved higher, shedding gold,
silvering as it diminished above the wall.
We had names, a flood of names; we had
flowers and letters laid beneath the names;
we had the voice of a woman reading names
from somewhere within a khaki tent, a crackle
of background noise mixed into hushed stir of feet
and silk flags whispering and charcoal rubbed
on paper to save a name, a name.
On marble, stonehenge stacked, I sat
before the wall to rub eyes stung by names,
then saw one clear: George Morningstar,
named in hope and beauty, once a boy, little
more than a child when uniformed and killed
and put into a file to become a white smear
above a Texas prairie on this moving wall. |
Honorable
Mention
A
Castrato Singer Addresses His Wife
London
1730
by Jerry Craven
Canyon TX
It remains unchanged since that slight
alteration in a Roman clinic when I was ten,
yet my voice commands doctor, saint, and king.
It is all I have.
It gives us this villa, the Raphael in the hall,
the silk dress and purse and gold you love
to jingle before your cousin, who trades
his presence and his absence for rose gold coin.
I offer words of love but not in trade.
I can offer only my voice--
it is all I have.
My words cast forth in song can shatter glass
and break hearts of lovers ardent for tones
of a woman's passion sung with love
and power as no female soprano can produce.
Take the gold enclosed in silk and go from me,
if you must; go to the cousin for passion that lives
in darkness, in glands inconstant and hungry;
seek love in throbbing flesh, if you must, and
go from me. I offer other rhythms
with my voice, beauty an army
of cousins cannot comprehend.
If it is love you seek in the night beyond
our villa, try turning back to me, to my art
to the gift left by the ravages of the Roman clinic;
listen to my song, to my words;
look to my male soprano voice,
for it is all I have.
Honorable
Mention
Narcissus Old
by Jerry Craven
Canyon TX
I look into the mirrored pool where golden
willows dim with white-barked pine
and flights of mockingbirds flash beside
gray hair rippling then still on waters
cool and silver reflecting a wading heron
and shimmered cloud of flying rooks.
Larks cry among autumn grasses,
quails whistle sharp and quick, crickets
ratchet in the meadow chorus: sounds in the dying
woodland to float above my October pool
in harmony with feather, face, and leaf.
I touch a finger to a withered cheek;
the image, rippled from a heron's beak,
reassembles a gray face and eyes
surprised by images from a surprising Fall. |
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Honorable
Mention
Mangrove Bones
by Jerry Craven
Canyon TX
Julia picks among mangrove bones
the best of driftwood baked gray in rooted
knots, sand-caught along a sheltered
beach; she rejects willow wood, brittle
now and soft, rejects sweetgum turned
to water-sponge that flakes at a touch,
rejects wood drifted from stands of Douglas
fir and pine, for they break when bound
for begonias potted into red clay.
She wants roots washed from mangroves,
barnacled, sinewed with foundation fiber:
these are the best for her art.
In a green past before Texas sun
dried lines around her eyes, Julia
smiled at boys who asked for dances
even as she refused their willow youth,
choosing walks alone in aging sun
upon her wooded beach.
Ancient mangrove serves her best
for holding driftwood art.
Other beached wood she admires,
drifted from pine and river willow,
smooth-limbed, beautiful
in their uselessness.
Julia gathers only mangrove bones,
stern architecture of roots,
functional once to anchor sea trees;
they become hers for finding balance
hers for slip
knot baskets to hold flowers green
and dying in spots of wrinkling sun. |