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Welcome to Garden 1107 in
ARTELLA'S POETRY GARDENS OF FAME!

Click the links below to read the winning poems for October/November, 2007.

Poetry Gardens of Fame Index

First Place
Second Place
Third Place
Fourth Place




FIRST PLACE WINNER


Barbara J. Gewirtz
Truly a lover of words and language, Barbara has participated in two New York City poetry groups. Her poem ON THE BMT detailing a subway ride was published by The New York Times in 2004. She attends a neighborhood art class and works with watercolors, pastels and fabric collage from her home in Brooklyn, NY.


Ventures in Verse
by Barbara J. Gewirtz

Medical data may routinely chart rhythm and time
But how vastly different our world would unfold
If not for pentameter and rhyme.
If census demographics waxed poetic
And if encyclopedic entries were all sensually defined.

Our semantics and grammar would dramatically drift
There would exist a veritable twist in Strunk’s "The Elements of Style."
Musings on history would reshape all humankind.
Collective wisdom would waiver, given this irrepressible shift.

We’re not all born as Whitman’s, Dickinson’s or Poe’s
From dust to dust and from ashes to ash
Consider how life-changing our prose,
If there were one more contemporary Kipling or Nash.

As for the food that we buy,
Weekly shopping lists might markedly change
In favor of alliteration
As in potato, pepper, pickle or pie.

From computer and engineering manuals
To indices of scientific annuals,
Our world would be more easily explored
Via enlightened haiku and enhanced metaphor.

Words would be more accessible.
Correspondence would ring with rapport.
Writing styles supplanted with simplicity and ease
Set for a small Vermont country store.

With each syllable selected
Hype and jargon would fade.
And by sleight of hand,
What we state would be grand.

And we’d no longer flounder or fish for our words
In our novel and new, poetic, lyrical land.


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SECOND PLACE WINNER

Sean Ward Housing
by Dr. Niama L. Williams

filmy glasses, sugared tea,
country time no more
yet in the suburbs i now reside.

don't know which,
couldn't find it on my own,
but i know a temporary home.

home is where the headboard
built to house books, the late night cup of coffee,
the favorite pen, the mirror you look in before retiring
before engagements with your imagined sweetheart
before sighing between sheets at his eventual appearance.

you wonder if, in giving up on the house,
you have reneged on him as well

you hope not.

instead you vacillate in this home of hard-working
lasagna-eating irish italians.
they have known drinking and smoking and fighting and furious
but never poor
parents who built them backs of steel
with hard living, harder life.

how many eleven year olds do you know
hold a six foot one at bay
to defend a five foot two?

you know the cast of characters
why he told the judge, stupidly,
No, no remorse.

and this man, this man takes me in.
black, ph.d.ed, homeless.
this why i told the afrocentrics
"hit the road jack, and don'tcha come back no more, no more, no more, no more!"
i'd had enough of black kickin my ass.

everyone who's hired me,
this time round,
has been white. a beatles fan even. wishing for a liverpool home.

the fearsome question. the fearsome question after sitting in his living room,
his wife finally asleep upstairs, a long overdue rest, him home from hard day's labor,
i having slept til noon
on the couchish chair, his youngest on one arm, curled up, his dog on the other, curled up.

do you see, do you see why i continue to trust white?
it is the spirit, the spirit that tells the truth of a person
the spirit and nothing else.

i do not feel worthy of this household
the scars of the husband are weight and shock to bear

but when have i, psychic, turned from a worthy burden?
when have i not sought to heal?

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THIRD PLACE WINNER



Flows to Bay
by Nancy Lewis

Under the massage therapist’s skilled thumbs,
knotted muscle unleashed
thrashing chocolate velvet
patterned with mid-century modern turquoise threads
sliding coffee-like into a catch drain on its way to the bay
churning under merganser feet
then trailing the keel of a ship
bound for some port in China.


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FOURTH PLACE WINNER

Winter Storm at Manzanita
by Patricia Kennelly

Don't buy a
sand dollar
purified
and unblemished
at the world's smallest
harbor shop
that sells pirate flags,
whale watches,
and day-old chowder

Find one
in the first-blush light
buried by the winter storms
spun by the ocean waves
dropped by a greedy seagull
still miraculously unbroken

it will smell of the sea
and a driftwood fire
and if you hold it close
you'll see
the bird-house shaped cottage
where we last
held hands and walked off
our last stormy days

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