Congratulations to our HONORABLE MENTIONS for our Poetry Contest! Please enjoy these beautiful poems! Mara Adamitz Scrupe's "Everything you ever wanted to know about the past lives of geraniums," David T. Budd's "Mapping Desires," Desmond Davies' "The Heron in the Snow," Zimuzo Onah's "Blue Profundity," and Jessicamarie Wermes' "[detangle]."
David T. Budd, "Mapping My Desires"
He rolled out the rice paper
and she dove onto the smooth white surface
splashing dark as blood
then bright chlorophyll, primrose,
bee balm, azure sky and dusky iris.
Swimming in all directions at once,
her strokes leave traces, a new delicate garden.
I feel you mapping my desires, he said, as
she teased him awake from his quiet dream,
She flaunting the magic of fibers and pigments
combined to dazzle and seduce.
The colors he felt even in the absence of light
asking him to rise and take in the fragrant intoxicating hues
she so artfully lay
before him.
They embrace, … release,
and embrace again
in the turning.
Together they are rolling out more
fresh white surface
and they swim,
swim in the spreading pool of colors.
Desmond Davies, "The Heron In the Snow"
The heron atop the chimney sits
in the snowfall, early in the spring;
silent, grackling only when he flew,
and observant, looking all about,
now left, now right, and, tilting his head,
at the man on the sidewalk standing agog.
His feathers, teal and blue and black,
fairly shone before the backdrop,
a natural canvas all glimmering white,
that obscured both sky and landscape;
a photograph waiting to be taken,
a painting needing only oils.
So a long flight from the river to the pond
and back again in a daily quest
for sustenance, a fish, perhaps, or an eel.
A living vane, with back to wind and snow,
the bird is quizzical in his demeanour.
What is that human there, and what's he for?
Undisturbed, the giant bill briefly preens.
In a trice, with a look and a lift,
the Great Blue Heron takes to the air again
and vanishes into the downy canvas.
Only a grackle is heard, then gone,
a photograph not taken, only observed,
and a man left standing on the pavement.
What is that human there, and what's he for?
Zimuzo Onah, "Blue Profundity" (a pantoum)
My heart dances to the ocean's melody
Sweet rumbles sing of blue profundity
The waves tell stories of chains broken
As I melt into this fiercely serene beauty
Sweet rumbles sing of blue profundity
The shore echoes its unusual tenacity
As I melt into this fiercely serene beauty
Lost in the passion it thirstily bestows
The shore echoes its unusual tenacity
Unable to hold back the impish splashes
Lost in the passion it thirstily bestows
While I breathe in resuscitated fortitude
Unable to hold back the impish splashes
The waves tell stories of chains broken
While I breathe in resuscitated fortitude
My heart dances to the ocean's melody
Mara Adamitz Scrupe, "Everything you ever wanted to know about the past lives of geraniums"
Jessicamarie Wermes, "[detangle]"
i, a curated nymph of a creature cut 14 inches of femininity off with rusty kitchen
scissors
searching the mirror for a girl
warped by the hunger of brown eyes
covered in blushing sugar and fingerprints
i found only myself
bare once again
giggles escaping the citrus slice of my lips
and
my mother warned
how this act would flavor me bitter
men like girls with long hair
as if my very existence is to be the sweet on his lips a being nothing more or less
then the flavor he craves
and so it came as no surprise when his silence
buzzed like a mosquito in my ear
how i had to fish the disappointment from his belly
and watch him gag
on the flustered opinion he held of me
called the way preened cute exhibitionized just for him
cascades of auburn over my shoulder
and i don't recall becoming this creature
i wasn't born tangled around the arteries of men
thirsty for their blood soaked attention yet now
vulgarity tastes of root beer syrup and raspberry chocolate
spilled from my pink tinted lips giggles of uncertainty
and satiation
because the truth of the matter is i hate who i've become for him
because of him
and so i find the very notion of him like tendrils
littering the tiles of my bathroom floor
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