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ARTELLA'S POETRY GARDENS OF FAME! Click the links below to read the winning poems for the week of July 16, 2004. Poetry Gardens of Fame Index |
Second Place
Third Place
Fourth Place
Jo Ann Alderman Baker
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COSMIC DUST - Part one of the Journey Across the universe cosmic dust lingers, lost forever in time waiting to come away with ringed eyes. Ice blue fire spirals down an echoed shadow looking hungrily right and left seeking the the breath of life. Green mitochondrial soup of respiration trails streams of fat stars bobbing in spun golden bowls howling for the warmth of human hands. When did space birth time and create chaos? Where is my soul? What spiral holds my heart? From what far corner spit the dust that blinds my eyes, Find my lungs twisting with the stars. |
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Carolyn Byrd
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The Promise You reach across the night to me And I find that secret place in your soul again. I glide down the tears Of the melting night And as dawn comes to us Where dawn does not come We see with our touches. |
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Okwudili Paul Nwankwo
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Refuge of Sorrow Wonders abideth in words, But scattered like a puzzle, Only assembled by the poets, And ultimately atone our hustle. When migraine pounds on my head, Like a tinker handles a pan, No dilly-dally, to my study I head, And do what I know better with my pen. Freely I associate with the kings, Not for muse, I would have been done, What's my name? Me treated like a prince. When I came to, the ache had gone. In my free world, I print my thought, If I'm not in the mood to sing; Wherefrom, the open minds shall be taught. The ignoramus, I feel for them as they sink. No cardiac therapy found in the world Better than the one I found in words. Alas, the man wastes in his ward. At last, I prescribed the one that works. A crying child finally falls asleep When the nanny applies the lullaby. Now, the protesters firmly agreed And the art so intrigued a passer-by. In my free world, I sing with the birds, Perching with them on branches of a tree; Neither minding what 'morrow brings nor takes. So I reaffirmed; life with the birds is a spree. My world abideth in words And I freely choose my words. |
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Sherrell Wigal
Cardinal Singing
This morning at dawn my father came, red feathered, singing the cardinal song. His death, one year gone and I am anointed again with his attendance pulling me into the day; His celebrations slip silently into my spirit; There are hayfields waiving, others turn in the sun, give up their back-throat bouquet; Scythes wait for the rhythm of his sweep, the grace of his stance reflected in lanky country boys shirtless at the afternoon roadsides; There are grease covered hands lathered with Lava, waiting to dip into galvanized buckets of spring water, come up, palms pink, nails and cuticles smudged and dark. Somewhere gardens wait at the top of farms their pale red dirt, dry and anxious for the crunch of hoe, the dip of spade into potato hills; Onion patches and cucumber vines whisper his presence, give up the taste of memory, and I rejoice in the rich yellow offering of peaches; There are tools expecting to be hung in garages on pegboards made of plywood and nails; to be clunked and clanked, used daily and wiped with the rags of old white undershirts, waiting to be borrowed and returned, borrowed and not returned. Old songs hang thick in the air each Saturday; Jeannie and her light brown hair, Clementine and Buffalo Gals come >round the mountains on tenor voices and drift over cowboys dropping roses on graves; Tunes which glide and hum unexpectedly, enter my mind with the turn of morning light. Water and weeds, packs of plump unfiltered cigarettes; bicycles, wagons, stilts, wheelbarrows, posthole diggers, linoleum; doors and windows moved so pianos and music could enter the lives of daughters who wait to write over and over the story of their life made lucid by his. No ending to the celebration passed from his life to mine; the wisdom of wind, the promises made in rain and echoed by thunder. I come to his grave ready to wail but laugh, touch grass and grain, lift song and thanksgiving toward each shape he conjures now to touch my life. |
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