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The Prize Winners:
1) Undressing Anne Frank
by Jessica Rowles - Writer's Block
2) Water Gossip
by D. Ouellet - About.com
3) Tower of Pisa....(or Oxygen Pimpstack)
by Tripp Howell - Gumball Poetry
And Honorable Mentions:
The Lost Generation
by Vickie Bowman - Callahan's Saloon
Totem
by Hugh Anderson - Café Utne and About. com
Pantoum with Garbanzos and Parrot
by Howard Miller - Gumball Poetry
Undressing Anne Frank - Jessica Rowles - Writer's Block
When I stand naked before
showering, I scrutinize
the freckle on my left
middle finger, the curve
of my toe, the way
skin stretches over
my pelvic bone, the slope
of my breasts.
But she, after a month of mornings
dressing in cramped spaces,
knew herself best by
extending fingers or stretching
arms behind her back, or
cupping hands over a chest
that was taking a new shape,
escaped to a cracked window
and stripped. Imagine her,
held captive, when light landed
like thrown paint on her bare skin.
Water Gossip - D. Ouellet - About.com
The creek crept out of its bed this morning,
swallowed a wooden bridge for breakfast,
spread itself like butter over green fields,
drowning daisies, uprooting cattails.
Waters gossiped with the neighbours,
come to get a better look.
Ripples giggled at the sight they made
standing on the hill,
bathrobe chatting with Sunday best,
like they'd never seen water dance.
Tower of Pisa....(or Oxygen Pimpstack) - Tripp Howell - Gumball Poetry
"When you walk the streets of Pisa, and the tower pops into view for the
first time, it is shocking -- the visual equivalent of a prolonged screech
of brakes. For a split second you wait for the crash."
-- Robert Kunzig, "Antigravity in Pisa"
Discover Magazine, August 2000
Sometimes I want
to stare into your eyes
beneath silk-spotted night
and hesitate to say something,
act as if the words won't come,
and when your curiosity and desire
finally squeeze me too tight,
open my mouth and solemnly whisper
something like
"coleslaw boxer shorts"
or
"oxygen pimpstack"
just to taste the odd angle of a moment
when no rules apply,
for which no poems have been written,
just to hear brakes screeching in shocked silence,
just to see the stutter in your eyes
as something you never thought you'd hear
threatens to topple you like Pisa's tower,
just so well be immersed
for a few seconds
in a scene
all our own,
which no two lovers
will ever share.
Honorable Mention:
The Lost Generation
- Vickie Bowman - Callahan's Saloon
She broke a tribal tradition yesterday.
She spoke her dead mother's name
on national Television no less.
It was a plea for an apology
from white Australians.
Ordinary people.
Ordinary people,
with little idea of why.
Why should they apologise?
It didn't happen, not in their time.
They didn't settle here way back when
the land was roamed by the Aboriginals.
The land was roamed by the Aboriginals.
Seduced and robbed by the white man,
they lost their own, one true heritage
Condemned to live in segregation
then force fed missionary zeal.
Far worse was yet to come!
Far worse was yet to come,
The came in big black shiny cars.
They came and took the children away.
A generation, stolen from black families.
Their intentions were good, educate the kids
turn them into pseudo whites, train them well.
Turn them into pseudo whites, train them well.
Forget the grieving mother the angry fathers
who had lost their loving happy children.
Ripped from their parents with no say,
they lost their families and identity.
They lost their Aboriginality.
They lost their Aboriginality,
until education, a new generation
began to wonder about their tribal past.
Where is my family mother? Who are we?
The stories were told, anger ignited hot blood.
Where is my land, what is my name, my tribal name?
Where is my land, what is my name, my tribal name?
A call from the children of a stolen generation.
The courts are filled with Land Rights claims,
no easy answers, few settlements are made.
An apology would be an admission,
with deep regret it is not given.
She broke a tribal tradition yesterday.
She spoke her dead mother's name,
Looking for her sisters, her family.
Totem - Hugh Anderson
- Café Utne and About.com
Here in the salt wind
the cedar lifts
spires of leaf and branch
I lean against its vital shell
The vanished heart
is dark
Wind off the sea
weaves my hair
into branches
Drill with this
woodpecker poem
a miracle grows
green life within the core
My clansman stands hollow
against the wind
while you have become
my living heart
Pantoum with Garbanzos and Parrot
- Howard Miller - Gumball Poetry
Shimmering faint gold,
emptied skins of garbanzos
flung into a heap
litter the white linoleum floor.
Emptied skins of garbanzos
parrot-peeled
litter the white linoleum floor,
rich thin surfaces tossed aside.
Parrot-peeled
as she searches for deeper truth,
rich thin surfaces tossed aside,
slippery beauty unregarded.
As she searches for deeper truth,
I walk in to learn how,
slippery beauty unregarded;
foot-flailing, I fall.
I walk in to learn how;
I'm a sort of truthseeker, too;
foot-flailing, I fall,
victim of truth's deceitful surfaces.
I'm a sort of truthseeker, too,
flung into a heap,
victim of truth's deceitful surfaces,
shimmering faint gold
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