Gather: Final Voting Round

Please vote for your favorite of the following eight poems. The poll will close at Midnight, CST on May 18th. Good luck, everyone!

C

..... FINALIST

Somewhere, Something Incredible

Carl Sagan drew me a map
Of all the signals arcing off into black possibilities
Opening like the petals of a camellia
Wrapped around the whole where of history.

Somewhere in the x-rays, the radios, the eternal pity of Mr. T
A rider clings to the looping waves,
The tremble in my fingers all along the wireless lines,
Jangling with words I know I shouldn't say.

I would have them cut deep as the date on a cornerstone
I would have them float out to the edges of where we are paramecia on a pinhead.
I would have them do anything, anything but spring back into my fingers
The only part of me with guilt enough to shed
In shaking.

We are made of star stuff but only see heaven in invisible parabolas.
To stop the tremble of my fingers with your steady grasp
I would give anything, anything but spring
Which has opened me like a camellia in your cupped hands
and poured you out in my lap.
__________________

K

..... FINALIST


Snowmelt

I've a winter's will
Cold and long as January
Packed tighter than a post-Christmas budget
Too dense to be salted by any pleading tears

I am married to frost, fortified with isolation
Loyal to layered clothing and cracked skin
I have chopped desire on the ax of reason
And piled the dry bodies high by the stove

I am frozen to anything, anything but spring
anything but you

You come in like a lion
Your roar stronger for your time in wool
Microwave smile and heat-lamp heart
Persephone come home for spring break

Sporting a snowmelt trampstamp
Still swollen and raised like a storm-fed creek
You swallow my fingers and my resistance
Washout my plans as easily as a rural road

I lick the dew from your crocus and
Melt against your fertility same as any other winter
__________________

N

..... FINALIST


As Alice dreams

Sleep's white tide pulls us
under...

and the rabbit
a hare's breadth from madness
folds his waistcoat
lays down his silent watch
curls his pink tongue
in a yawn

watches the fox
still as snow
his breath a mist to
mask his stiffened whiskers
muffle the tapping of his claws
till all the world
drifts away
in foggy thoughts of
gold eyes black...

till everything
is anything
but spring
__________________

W

..... FINALIST


Cruising

Her cruise is a magazine ad
of an oversized martini glass
filled with something coppery red,
dog-eared to read later on the deck
while sipping a cup of Earl Gray tea;
his will be an Old Fashioned glass
next to a book he'll never read.

There's almost no drama but for the shows
she doesn't like, he does,
such as The Late Show before it's too late,
before the both of them fall asleep
with anything but spring in the bed,
except for the sharing forty-some years
spring come winter, winter come spring

of Fred is Maggie, Maggie Fred
whose left hand's on an ample ass,
right arm cradling a smiling face
that leans into a double chin
there in their stateroom, mortgage paid,
on Staten Island by Raritan Bay.
__________________

Aa

..... FINALIST

Odd Objects to Ballerinas

A lucky coin, a feather, X-Men #95,
all of this I would leave gathered
under some kind of tree as
if I'd be so lucky to win you
away from your sorrow. Not
that I think I can, but perseverance
is next to godliness, etc.

I don't want to date you. I just
want to recover that fine happiness
that lays just beneath the soil

of your over-churned life. I want
you to fly again, frail chrysalis,
despite the pain in your limbs.

Balance. En pointe. The agony
of toe shoes brings focus, or should,
to your bereavement. Nothing,
of course, I can say will matter,
and if this were anything but Spring,
or Dance—plié, jeté—I wouldn't even try.

Now, please, just grasp the barre.
__________________

Cc

.... FINALIST


Bloom

This stolid cherry,
Unmoved by anything, but
Spring coaxes her wild
Blush from her bared and spread limbs
With the idle lap of sun.
__________________

Dd

..... FINALIST


Paperwhites and Pomegranate Seeds


Fist full of daffodils,

little narcissus
tepals blowing up like Marilyn's white dress
corona bright enough to draw moth-winged Icarus

water flowers, your favorite,

pulled from the reflecting pool,
green as your eyes, that threw back my genuflection when I called your white dress perfect, called us one,
replanted in grave dirt, shaded by stone
ruin of our ambitions fertilizing the roots
I shouted "forever" in Odysseus's brave tenor too near Poseidon's ear
the horse lord sent a Mustang GT to teach me humility and floristry

they smell like-

wedding cake smashed an inch deep around my nose
menstrual blood in the bathroom trash
Chanel No. 5 and taco seasoning on Tuesday nights

aluminum, antifreeze, high octane, hospital disinfectant,
pancake makeup on a stranger wearing your best dress,
winter dust stirring in the AC vents above rooms still full you

They smell like anything but spring.
__________________

Pp

..... FINALIST


Exhibition: A Still Life

When you left me, we took our bed out to the curb

We left it like an artifact, ex marks the spot
To be discovered by the homeless man in the fedora
The Indiana Jones of Tennessee Avenue
It belonged in his Warhol museum
of broken televisions and cordless stereos

White noise coils holding anything but spring

It became the main attraction
the pièce de résistance is futile

Sheets splattered with action like a Pollock
Frame crooked as Duchamp's staircase nude
Of Prouvén worth, steel-reinforced, four post anchored, and still not enough to hold us

We left that mattress containing everyday dust, mites and could’ves, unwashed by Picasso's weighted words, dead skin cells still rubbing up against each other, like Guernica, the last to see

Bacteria art yet breeding the culture of you and I

Like Monet's Rouen, the day has passed our shrine leaving it empty save the echoes of “Oh my God!”
__________________