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Second Place
Third Place
Honorable Mentions
Matt Beatty
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Two lit offices in the tall romantic tower, on the twelfth floor, lonely and looming and large. A lighthouse for the dusk-people-- set aside in their longing, breezing by with the tower-- the only testament to an ephemeral existence. Down the dimly lit stair with the nearby trees and their not-quite-midnight silhouettes that remember Vincent Price. There's that little city: it reaches, it crawls, it thinks it's a city and so it is, it must be. Marching on slush, melting beneath my heated soles, accumulating in even swaths ahead of and behind me. Past the Wash Hut where the smell of fresh linen-air wraps my head in a smoky shawl of lint and fluff as it rises heavily into the night. Near the busy doors of Liberty Square, a place I frequented once, some other life, some century past--the future perhaps. The sidewalk buckles with the weight of the feet, those endless feet that trace its cracks to the dried roots of oak, breaking above soil. Such an ominous, inescapable mountain range, it too shrouded in the same clouds wafting out below from the forgotten chimney-mouth. World do your worst!--For I shall thaw this frigid permafrost, my wintry overcoat, my icy skin. That view, those empty branches framing emptier greys and the welcoming brickwork all along, near the 1952-church where I stole a bough of fir just for its scent, and in return those mountains stole a little of my sanity, and a little of my little life. As first place winner in the Poetic Idol Competition, Matt won a prize package that includes a $150.00 cash prize; an e-Chapook of his poetry (up to 20 poems), attractively created and published for his personal or commercial use; public status as Artella's Poetic Idol in Residence; a feature interview in an issue of e-Artella; guaranteed publication in an e-Artella issue; free enrollment in his choice of Artella e-courses, the Artella eBook, "Behind the Veil", his choice of any e-Artella issue, and one month FREE Artella membership. Click here for contest details. |
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Kevin Craig
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Bikes propped along their spines, torn Banana seats soaking up morning from the dewy grass, their tires spinning out Tibetan prayer wheel rhythms as Daryl Sittler flaps madly, clothes-pinned prisoner of my chanting spokes, retribution for Daves defacing of Dryden. Basement, musty, Alive with the pungent air of dying pears crab apples and blackened plums, our secret hoard, gathered in a late summer squirrel-style panic, shirts stretched to bursting from our covert backyard take. Hockey sticks, once leaning steadily against the fear-striking heat-spewing mammoth, lay scattered about the chipped grey concrete, randomly strewn, or purposefully aligned? hieroglyphic messages from basement clerics or abandoned crutches, the scattered remains of a secret furnace-side healing banquet? These memories, all vague, somewhat reminiscent, like ones tongue tip knowledge of orange peels and mangoes, but distant too, more distant than the fleeting moment it takes to hear the distinct flicker, the bicycle spoke music of a new generations prayer wheel dreams. |
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Laurie Cuneo
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My night sky is not black velvet studded with rhinestones, but a crazy quilt of constellations - chaos and splendor - goose down clouds thinning to chiffon. My stairway to Heaven is a zipper with a broken tooth, a pin-pricked finger staining the silver steps... longing for a thimble. |
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Karen Stone
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It Was Too Fast It was too fast. A snake strike. The pain itself was nothing. It was the speed that shocked. And as I put the finger to my lip The whole world shuddered and changed. The very walls around me revealed their mirrored secrets. While time began to whirl and twist, I saw myself, (So slow of motion) (Caught fast) Take the hand away. Lips now sealed with that ruby drop. What happened next? It changes every time I think about it all. In my heart I know that I still stand in that high room, Small and unfamiliar to me. Still a little shocked at being hurt. Still tasting the salt of my own blood. That is in my heart. For the rest, my lips are sealed by my own hand, my own crimson self. I wander, I seek, I am buffeted from one dream to the next. Time stretches then contracts. A flash, a moment, Just now and then, I am there. I feel heavy in my skin, Cold, and under my fingers tip, The velvet and lace of my skirts are both sweet and sour to the skin. Time passes I suppose. That is all I really know of time. That is seems to us to go by. My finger throbs, but I am not wanting to open my eyes, To see again that dark and empty room. So who is this face that hovers? These eyes are open. Shock, anticipation. My hand moves toward the little sharp knife they gave me once, to hide in my skirts. And at the same time as I touch the cold steel, cold resolve upon me, I am startled by the warmth on my face. My cheek has recently felt another. My lips are soft as pressed fruit and free of the crimson seal so long ago placed. I look again into the eyes of this stranger. His face scratched and bleeding. His arms scratched and bleeding. I put my finger to the crimson and touch his lips with his own salty blood. The world shudders and changes about us. Is this another dream? I have had enough of sleep. |
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Rob McCreery
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The Ancients I. John Coltrane He uncoils his hidden mood around you conspires with you in plangent, aching peals this is manhattan in the warm night rain a dusky cloak of spotlight and smoke he knows you never knew him but he makes you feel a love supreme as he did II. Miles Davis He suspends light brassmute shafts around you thrills you with a perfect, unplayed note this is the calm, dark, rolling shifting ocean a strange suggestion of absinthe and dreams he changes colour's name but he makes you see kind of blue as he did III. Thelonious Monk He fingerplinks out starlight sparks to wake you teases you with cryptic, rightwrong chords this is beatnik cafes in the afternoon a glad note that your dreams are real somewhere he defies evening's gravity but he makes you cry 'round midnight as he did IV. Epilogue They made their new, fantastic constellations then showed us their exotic, brilliant truths their temple is a cool, eternal universe a vast kaleidoscopic jazz of sounds they strode as living gods among us and we were in that number when the saints came marching in |
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April Cooper
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I Know (for Virginia Wolf) I. Five hundred a year stands for the power to contemplate, when you grow up eating white beans and ham-hocks, peeing off the back porch of a condemned house without plumbing, and wearing your mothers wedding dress for eighth grade graduation, self confidence is as unattainable as your own room when you birth your first child at the age of seventeen, learn neither friendship nor romance will play in your sandbox, and survive on three hundred a month and food stamps to earn your diploma, the dream of composing poetry is as impractical as a prom date when madness creeps in to take your wits hostage, a naïve choice in a lover leads to his gun in your bedroom, and your second child is conceived in rape rather than love, freedom of mind is as hopeless as a safe place to sleep when your days become blurred snapshots, writing research papers while nursing at midnight, picking lice from your daughters corkscrew curls, and crumpling into bed alone and weeping, the power to contemplate is as unlikely as finding a devoted father for your children II. a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself. my stories are not hidden behind wiggling door handles, my insights strut between silly songs and giggles with my babies my stories are not opened with brass keys tinkling on a silver ring, my brainstorms swirl and burst among homemade bubbles in the back yard my stories are not bound by scrawls on paper or pixels on a computer screen, my tragedies bleed from tiny fingers with splinters and paper cuts my stories do not wait for a quiet room to reveal themselves, they run naked through my house and office when least expected my stories learn with me that privacy is a luxury a mother must demand after so many years of interrupted movies, meals, showers, and sexual tanglings my stories gather in my lap each day as the sun sets, where I kiss them one by one, tuck them in a pocket of my heart and whisper, Our time will come. |
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Dawn Richerson
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Becoming the Poem
I stammer. I stutter. I stupidly sputter, then stop the futile, frantic, purely pedantic reach into this clamor for the poem Ive lost on some dusty shelf inside maze of self. I breathe, cease to hurry, worry, see clear what was blurry. I become the poem I couldnt quite compose and know as I bear its light hope grows and burns bright. Live now through this meantime, sans rhythm, verse or rhyme, lay down perfection, trust new direction, and rest in the image-rich stream of lifes languorous dream. |
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