20 Out in the Mountains April 2000

 

I First Place  

The

Winners

Postcards My Brother Used to Send

I found the poetry and postcards

my brother sent me,

buried in a shoebox beneath the calm,
yellow chill of antiquity.

The skyscrapers and boardwalks
he called home rise to view

in my palm—torn and wrinkled
panoramic sights of city streets:

Castro, Christopher, Bleecker, Duval—
“Full,” he wrote, “yet so empty.”

I shuffle his happiness

in my hands: still—lifes

of his errant ways scattered before me.

I see him smile in each.

He never called home.

They adored him in neon—drenched cities

where, I know, men dance on pillars
in pink light, tight underwear, ‘
laserbeams growing

into their chests and torsos.

His poetry confused me: childhood,
masturbation, men together in bed.
Now his life is a blur on my carpet:
“Sis, you must come to New Orleans—

You’d love the French Quarter!"

I live an ordinary life here in Iowa
and my children will grow up

never knowing their lost uncle, going

slowly as I scrub the drawers of my hutch:
a complete resurrection and burial at once
for the boy whose peregrinations

became his family. The last postcard

from Boston, barely legible, inscribed:

“It was the only life I had.”—melodramatic,

a quote from a poem. The wake is tomorrow,
someplace Northeast, his remains blown

on winter snow, freezing until Spring

where he’ll grow into daffodils and azaleas,
second life, true beauty, reaching toward

the sun in daylight and the moon, safe moon.

2000"”

OITM Poetry

Contest

Second Place
Grandfather Robin

]effery Walt
Winooski, VT

The leap we take is no small thing

off the sharp steep lava into the slapping sea.
It is a long way down and a long wait

as we gather ourselves respectfully

asking for clear hearts

so that we can swim’

with andnot at.

It is all I can do to calm myself

arm over arm, my body full of doubt,

the waves are barriers to what we seek to see.

Third Place

Swimming With Dolphins

We stop and ‘peer about, everything is churning
and I grab for your hand, it is instinctive

as I am coming apart in the water I

and suddenly I breathe in and look down

and they are there, four muscled sleeks

and aibaby, an impossibly miniature version
right there, right below us, resting suspended
below our roiling water, one of them regards us
with an eye, and I am weeping, my mask
filling with tears, salt and salt in my mouth.

They visit us for seconds, hours, my hand
so tightly held in yours,
perhaps we come across

I as apod, and it is only

the generous pressure
of yourwilling skin and bone
that keeps me

from remembering

I cannot breathe the water.

Patricia Fontaine

Williston, VT