Craving

by Shannon Connor Winward

ghosts

try not to scream

(a cup of tea
or steam)

the peculiar have
their reasons

even now
the weight of loss

* erasure poem from Graveminder, Melissa Marr

Judge’s comments:
Graceful as a curl of fog or twist of steam. The poem’s lone rhyme of “scream / steam” (besides lending grace), helps to move a reader through the poem the way a circus-goer’s ushered through a spook house. The word “peculiar” works well here. The weight of loss weighs down these weightless ghosts. The poem is even vaguely ghostly in its shape.

Dragon Tongue Sushi

by Robert Borski

Preparation is similar to that
of its sister delicacy, fugu—
the tiger blowfish being laden
with lethal amounts of tetrodotoxin.
Ergo, proper care must be taken
by the chef to remove all traces
of the fire vein, lest the potential
gourmand, smacking his lips,
vanish in a paroxysm of smoke
and pickled ginger.

Judge’s comments:
Its opening comparison to the the very real blowfish dish makes this poem sound real from the start. I love the idea of the fire vein! This piece makes me imagine an entire cottage industry of dragons grown in pens, like veal, to satisfy the tables of antediluvian Chinese emperors and nobles.

by Susan Burch

speed of light—
how quickly you think
I should get over it

Judge’s comments:
This quick haiku words supremely well—its near-glibness mimicking the off-handedness of the offending party’s attitude.

Regarding the Mastodons

by Timons Esaias

What I object to
is the traffic;
their great chariots
drawn slowly, slowly
by torpid pampered oxen
down what had been
four lane roads.

Who guessed
that they would be
so wise?
That simple duels
held once a year
could replace war?
That herds ancient
and extinct,
could have such virtues?

What I regret
is the humiliation
of it.
Remembering
how I used to be.

We were such children.

Judge’s comments:
This poem’s meditative tone flows majestically as elephants or battleships, trailing its great wake of implications: how we brought mastodons back from extinction by some clever science, only to find we’d awakened an ancient greatness. One that took back the world from us, and did a better job running it. Like the best science fiction, this poem could be a future headline.

Gretel at Menlo Mall, 1996

by Stacey Balkun

avoided the food court. She had changed
her name to Gwen like Gwen Stefani,
a rock singer with cotton-candy hair

that the other girls loved though the thought
of cotton candy made Gretel-Gwen wince
and the Cinnabon smell wafting through the mall,

nearly gag. She lingered in Sam Goody
(good taste in music though no sense of style),
hated skirts and heels and anything that meant

scratched calves from blackberry stems, trouble
running through the woods, a panic the other girls
couldn’t understand since they didn’t know

who she was—had been. So they nagged how nice
her legs were, how they wished their waists
slim as hers, even as they sucked lollipops

and shared salted pretzels and frozen yogurt
with sickening rainbow sprinkles. Gretel never ate sugar,
took her coffee black and unblended

when the girls claimed the window chairs
at Starbucks to flirt, frozen drinks sweating
between their palms. Gretel agreed to the mall

only because she craved normality
the way other girls craved Hershey’s or cherry lip gloss
or Teriyaki chicken samples cooling on a tray

with toothpicks poked through the skin, all melted fat
and sugary sauce offered by a woman
in a white apron and fresh hairnet. Gretel would wait

outside when they sat for their haircuts
since the salon’s hot iron smell
of burned hair reminded her of the witch,
but Gretel knew how to outsmart even the adults
and could avoid all of the stressful places
and throw her head back with a laugh at the right moments

without the other girls doubting her name,
without suspecting her of having a past at all.

Judge’s comments:
The devil’s in the details in this poem that’s so well grounded and developed. Everyday, common things trigger flashbacks of that famous witch’s cabin in the woods for “Gwen,” who suffers from a severe case of fairy-tale PTSD. Cinnabon’s sugary incense reminds her how she and her brother barely escaped being cannibalized. A salon’s occasional tang of scorched hair rekindles the memory of a burning witch. This poem is a reminder that many of us never really heal, but learn to blend in well enough to watch the world we can’t be part of.

Even Happy Ghosts Can Be Scary When You’re 7

by Kathleen A. Lawrence

Every
day after school, a
couple of
beatific
apparitions
zigzagged the
yards I crossed.
Expecting the
worst I watched them
vowing their love in
unison, as
they
sauntered
romantically.
Quickening my
pace,
out-of-my-gourd
nervous, I
made for home.
Lovingly
kissing while
joining
invisible
hands, this
ghost couple’s
fate was without
end. Eternity.

Judge’s comments:
These short lines move quick as a kid ducking ghosts in this unique tweak on the abecedarian’s lively and challenging form, lightly touching base with every letter of the alphabet at each line’s start, while mixing tints of fear, romance, and whimsy.

Elvis Triptych

by William Stobb


I. Elvis at the Acropolis

The King was not impervious to the pressure placed on him by adulation. That’s why, every January, Elvis celebrated the month of his birth by taking out a lease at the Acropolis, where he allowed himself a period of meditation and spiritual regeneration. He fasted. He followed peyote trails to the furthest reaches outside and inside of him. He understood it was the same—all directions circled. In pain and confusion, trapped in an image of two coins circumscribing, Elvis cried out. Thirst had devastated his vocal chords and the open break in his throat could not be sealed by wax. Yanni emerged and became his cousin, a professor of Greek God Studies at the community college there. Long nights, Yanni and Elvis laughed and shared intimate fantasies, which differed little from the kinds of pornography that were available then—the scenarios might vary, and sometimes the further reaches of even psychological comprehension could be breached, like when Elvis expressed his desire to experience the orgasm of hippopotamus. Elvis binged at that time and put his frenulum inside the hair of Yanni. The common observation that our repertoire of fantasies conforms to the times was no less true for Elvis than for any one us, struggling every day to stay afloat on a sea of improbable thoughts and feelings.

II. Elvis Ends the Sun

This was by the docks, where a yellow dump truck chugged and sputtered, laden with a high pile of Columbian. Elvis achieved the bowel movement of many universes, and fixed himself from his stocked kit. In well-being, Elvis saw Mother Sun slight, wanting, and Elvis’s voice boomed from the distant moon of Jupiter: “baby you fine, baby you mine, baby you fine all mine.” The King brought his face below the waters and used tongue of questions to bring Mother Sun to the verge of the strongest orgasm, the orgasm of nothingness. Inspired by his skill to pause for a moment and blow hot breath on her want, Elvis earned free games on Red Marquee for nine eternities. And by finishing with serpent fingers, Elvis became her King. She appears now as the yellow cartoon in the corner of the sky. “Cum Is Precious, Cum Is True,” Elvis posted to the grid, and his meaning pulsed through the wikis, even as the sun-spasm shot the final points of infinite blackness slowly through every cell.

III. Elvis Zero

This was in the new desert behind Hilton, past narrow alley with dumpsters of tribute to King in Ruby Jumpsuit. All the thrusting in Famous Hound Dog made static, and the magnetic field from the ballads to Flamingo Marquee went pulsar in Groin of Many Colors. This is not a test. Language will zip like once called sky along the rocket-carved lip line. Language will not land lovers and combatants who minus one in the Volunteer ocean. Achieve curvature of mind and recall Cleopatra’s orgasm. Activate for courage the Battles of Kahn. Attempt another thousand years in this second but find the command infected. Limbs in whirl spiral to FBI contact. Hand of Nixon. Activate paralyzing gaze of southern mystery. Activate Cleopatra in Halo of Innocence made rose by knowledge of her appetites. Command Infected. Command infected. Activate Flamingo Marquee for no update and feel twang of release in the system. Recall the ballads. Save “All Elvises Are As Elvis Is” in scroll. Process final deductions or proceed to not with an open test and unpaid debit. Search back to results page and code out one Elvis first love. Anticipate command freeze and zero. Recall flesh of Debra Paget. Run code. Process embrace. Command freeze. Elvis Zero.

Judge’s comments:
The mythologizing starts as soon as someone dies, from 1980s tabloid sightings of the King in a Louisiana Burger King to “Elvis Triptych.” Seeking enlightenment, Elvis becomes the Sun Goddess’s consort, later becoming an infinity of Elvii as computers spread. Ultimately the King becomes a god, following an ancient path kings trod upon their deaths since Gilgamesh. This poem updates the present with the past’s grand mask.

Thirteen Ways to See a Ghost

by Shannon Connor Winward

1.
As a young woman, your mother finds a dead uncle watching her sleep. The chair is no longer wedged against the door.

2.
Neighbors tell her the couple who owned this house first lost a child. Your mother found him. The crayon marks in her closet could have come from her own, but she sees him, not much taller than the mattress, circumnavigating the bed, as children do, while your father and the boys are sleeping.

3.
You make a joke of it, but he bit her once, left marks, and how would you explain that?

4.
There’s a closet under the basement stairs, a perfect Bat Cave and hiding place. Not-it once, your brother hears, distinctly, Hi. He forfeits the game.

5.
You never found him, but you’ve lost enough in that closet.

6.
Your mother cleans the Hazard house, a squat yellow colonial leftover spitting distance from the old capitol with roots under the New Castle cobblestone. It reeks of piss and centuries. The basement stairs are narrow, dank. She prefers to leave it to the cats until one she’s never seen before climbs out and growls, Get out. After that, she makes the owner leave the Mop-n-Glo upstairs.

7.
“I’m supposed to be here,” she spits back. “You get out.”

8.
You do the Garrett mansion by the Pennsylvania border, too, when it’s still a school. Your job is to flip chairs for the boys, collect bits too big for the vacuum mouth. You visit the animals, nose to their cedar-lined cages, and the human skull, and play outside on the hill alone. You don’t remember the house, just the trees and open sky, the town of Yorklyn sleepy and rustling below, but Mom says those basements go deeper than any should. There are three, one under the next, and no one is allowed to go past the first. Slaves slept down there. It’s darker than dark, and what breathes out at you is not about freedom.

9.
Your grandfather slept in the basement until your mother kicked him out for whoring, and then he died. You don’t remember him, either.

10.
In second grade you start a ghost club. You hold hands over the drainage grates at recess (because the dead prefer damp, dark places) and tell lost souls to move on. The other girls swear they can see them too.

11.
In the basement of your parents’ house, your bags are packed. You are used to things sitting on the mattress, tugging the sheets, but that is no Casper-friendly child. That is man-sized. It is an absence of light, still there when you click on the lamp, but not after you scream. It doesn’t want you to go.

12.
You worked nights at the old school below where the Garrett house burned down. A caretaker haunts it, walking the halls, rustling papers, shutting doors—but this story is not about you.

13.
When they escort your parents to the room where your brother’s body lies waiting, your mother stammers, “I’ve never met anyone who died,” which, by any definition, just isn’t true.

Judge’s comments:
Genre-blending, this loose narrative evokes the feeling of reading an excellent horror story, but with the added intimacy of poetry brought to bear, intensifying the experience.

We Shall Meet in the Star-Spackled Ruins

by Wendy Rathbone

all the skies between galaxies
shimmer in void
what beautiful abysses
we travel, you and I

because there are no gods yet
we make them
old grass for hair
September minds
thinking red smoke thoughts

when they dream
myths are made
and war
fields of helmets
with the heads still in them

no starship has ever gone far enough
to find proof of life
we see fairies out the portholes
and orchids
and black tetras
tractor beams fail to bring
them aboard

the months go by
all autumn, even May

when time was young
it wore shorter skirts
now it’s all
cloaks and hoods
masquerades
on free-floating space-craft
verandas

a diagonal crack in the mirror
means the rains will soon come
bitter chartreuse
bringing the boat-wrecks up
the weeds and the mermen

sometimes I cannot see anything
real in a human way
“Lift me up from the abyss”
they say
but it is over-rated out here

let me sink back into myth
Olympian palaces
and naked gods all made up
and ready to rule
my dollhouse
my million rooms
my endless poem

pool after pool of
satyr and nymph orgies
under limitless October stars
glistening orifices
invitations
elixirs from the genitalia of immortals
milk and honey
wine and lilacs
tangle of limbs and lips
even the trees bend down to drink

back on Earth
incense and patchouli
on over-kill
I open the window to the rain
it brings clarity of
green-ness
May’s birthstone
even though it is now November
in the northern hemisphere
and all the bracelets
drip topaz
on all the wrists
of naiads, sylphs, wolf-men
the bobbing mer-folk
with fire in their hair
the moon princes
the lords of amber and
burned-out suns

I walk down the abysses
in the dripping dark hours
just to feel again
ghost-hands caressing me
wrapped in black silk
of shadow shrouds
distilled down to the curled inks
of all the poems I have yet to make
out of all the stolen years
alive
pretending
to be an earthman
to be an earthwoman
to be an earthbeing
I remember worrying about belonging
and glamour
and not being good enough
secretly wishing there was a devil
who might spit in the face of
a god that never was

I am god-blind
but not myth-blind
I could make up creatures
all day long
dress them in twigs and moons
and set them at the windows
of my doll-ship
and in my diorama of
tinfoil stars and
Swarovski novas

so many lanterned nights
moth-wings like powdered sugar
on the static air
the pink deaths of candleflames

I speak fluent autumn now
royal dusks
leaf-kings
egos of dark vanity
rushing through embers of meteors dying
in the dew-less fields
I am fluent in
witch dreams
erotica
and chimney-smoke curving up
to starship-eyed skies
when I brush my hair
pieces of galaxies
fall away

my love once said
“watch me walk across this abyss
just to get to you”

the definition of strength is
how long you will wait for him
to return from his odyssey

the definition of death is
stardust

the definition of love is
how long you will wait for
the stardust to reform
into you and me

after the heat-death
we shall meet in the
star-spackled ruins
of December

storm of ash-glitter
falling on my skin
the desperate calls
of myths
to be told again
sky-chariots burning
so many iridescences
in their wings

Judge’s comments:
Some great imaginings and images in this gathering of myths and lies and selves and love. I speak fluent autumn is a super line! Stanzas two and six enchanted me. Despite its lines of age, a wistful sense of letting go of youth pervades this piece.