SHORT FICTION - First Place
Sharyl Heber
Beanie’s Flowers
Why does Beanie think I need a fresh bouquet
every morning? I know he filches flowers from Tucker’s garden. He leaves licorice
sticks in our mailbox and cold
soda pops on my windowsill in summer. I walk to piano lessons, he’s on my tail. He pretends to cool
from the sun on our porch swing, but he’s there in the rain as well.
“He’s just being sweet, Cally.” Mama says,
admirin’ his pilfered jar of snapdragons from the kitchen door. Sweet. Maybe so,
except for the chill he leaves behind.
Sweet draws wasps.
I’ve known Beanie Cramer since we were
toddlers. We’re seventeen now and he’s always been scrawny and scruffy. Beanie’s
ma claims he’s schooled-at-home. All I can see is a
stutterin’ dimwit. I’m sure he’s broken and shamed but
does he have to take me down with him?
I’m hanging laundry in the sun and he’s
lurking.
“Beanie! Can you give me some peace?” But, he just freezes there, glarin’ at me.
Addin’ eerie to irritation, last month, a
girl my age was cut up and left for buzzard-chow in the cornfields.
“Get going or I’m telling your Pa!” I shout
at him.
He scoffs, then backs off, kickin’ up dirt
with his shoes. He eyes the path to the main road, but he’s not budging.
“Howdy, Beanie,” Mama calls out. “Stay for supper?”
He shakes his head with a
fired-up no, gives
me a look like his entire life is one long funeral march, then shuffles on
home.
Next morning I hear Mama on the phone, “No. Good
God!” She hangs up, grabs me by the arm and sits me down in the kitchen.
“Mazy Otis has gone missin’,” she says, clutching at her blouse.
I think on this for a minute. “I just saw Mazy yesterday,
buying plaid for a skirt project. She was real excited that her pa was gonna let her ride horseback in the
July parade.”
“Cally.” Mama grips my hand so hard it hurts. “Somethin’
evil’s goin’ on. Be extra careful, hear me? Don’t be goin’ out alone. You and
your friends, go in twos, promise? And your daddy, he’ll drive you if he’s not
working.” Then she adds, “Or, get Beanie to walk you.”
What I don’t tell Mama is that Beanie Cramer was outside the
Stitch-N-Time watching Mazy as she went skipping home.
A week goes by and no sign of Mazy. They’ve deputized Postman
Wilbur and hired some big city investigator to make rounds and search the
fields. I’m trying to take Mama’s advice and buddy up, but I’ve got a music
lesson and Chrissy
and Babs are both busy.
“I’m goin’ to piano,” I shout to Mama.
“Who’s going with you?” She follows me outside.
“Babs” I lie. Mama won’t check and Babs doesn’t have a phone in her house anyway.
I step out on the porch and nearly trip over
a new jar of purple and yellow pansies.
Criminy, Beanie, just
leave me be, will you?
Mama grins and arranges the flowers up on the
porch rail like they’re actually appreciated.
It’s half a mile past Four Corners Junction then a long driveway up to Miss Mertle’s house. I’m watchful
as I go. If I catch wind of something, I’ll hightail it. I’m fast as a jackrabbit.
Partway there, I look back. Beanie Cramer’s behind me.
“What do you want, Beanie?” I yell at him. He
doesn’t answer, but surveys the crossroads.
“Where’s Mazy?”
He hangs his head, shufflin’ his feet, then
pulls at his mangy blonde hair. I can tell he’s frettin’ over somethin’. I pick
up my pace. He stays in step.
“My parents know exactly where I am!” I
shout, but my voice is small on the wind. There’s
no one to help me out here.
Beanie stops, shakes his head and raises his arms up to the sky. He mouths a curious sound; a long, raspy kind
of wail. If I couldn’t see the boy wobblin’ on two spindly legs I’d swear he
was a cornered mountain lion.
He disappears back the way he came and I suffer
through a distracted piano lesson. “If you’re not going to apply yourself,
Cally Beecham,” Miss Myrtle complains, “don’t bother coming back!”
Next afternoon, Mama rushes in from market with
a load of scuttlebutt.
“Listen up, Cally Jean. According to Sheriff
Grady, Beanie Cramer’s not been far from the scene! He’s been following those
girls! That inspector man is over at his place right now givin’ the Cramers the
third degree!”
Mama’s not so keen on Beanie’s sweet gestures
now.
Beanie. Could it really be? Peculiar
and irksome as summer skeeters, but... murderer? I hug myself to make sure I’m safe
and think on all the isolated places I’ve been with that boy—Purdy’s orchards, Yellow
Rock Gully. Heck, apart from our skimpy blacktop Main Street,
this corncob town is nothing but lonesome dirt roads.
A knock on our window
shocks me back to the kitchen. Sheriff Grady calls Mama out to the porch. I hear snippets through the whispers.
“Just checking to see that your girl is okay.”
Mama glances at me through the screen door. Chewing her nails, so she must be rattled. “Cally’s fine,” she
says. I hear my name and join
her outside.
I look over at Grady’s car. In the back seat is Beanie’s pa, Mr. Cramer. He waves at me so I can see his handcuffs. Ratty gray
beard, yellow teeth; the man has a wild look in his eyes he keeps lasered in my
direction.
Beanie races up on his bike. He leaps, droppin’
his bike in the dust and stands between me and his father’s terrible gaze.
“Leave her alone!” he shrieks at his pa.
“You
spineless moron!” his father booms, spittin’ tobacco juice on the car window.
Beanie stands his ground. “I aint no moron!”
Beanie’s new backbone makes his pa furious. The man throws a
fit, poundin’ on the window with his handcuffs. The sheriff scuffles with him and
ties him up good and tight then drives off leavin’ Beanie to sink to his knees.
I move to stand over him as he cries.
“He followed you everywhere,” Beanie tells me
in a shredded voice. “He watched from that shed while you was layin’ in the
sun.” Beanie’s quiet crying turns to sobs. “I was so scared for you.”
“Lord in heaven,” Mama gasps, crossin’
herself like she was a churchgoer.
For the first time ever, I lay hands on Beanie
Cramer. I pull him up to his feet and lead him to the porch swing. He puts his
head on my lap. Weary has gnawed at his
features. Up close,
it’s bruises not dirt that darken his face, ribs showin’ through his worn out T-shirt.
I hum an off-tune lullaby and pick hay from his greasy hair
while I crack glue from my
stuck opinions.
Silos that dot the land pull up on my gaze
and I and try not to think how close I’ve come to carnage.
By the back door, this morning’s blue cornflowers stand guard in their jar.
SHORT FICTION - Second Place
Laura Ruth Loomis
PLEASE
I huddle against the fence, shielding
the match with my hand, trying to protect it long enough to light the
candle. A pitiless wind snaps it
out. This morning’s rain had subsided
into drizzle, but now it’s starting back up.
The candle is in a glass jar decorated
with a picture of Saint Christopher, the protector of travelers. I bought it in a Catholic bookstore this
morning, along with a medallion. I try
another match, which flares for a moment and then goes out. Maybe the saint knows I’m Jewish. “It’s for a friend,” I say out loud. Though I only met her a few times.
There’s a picture I keep in my
travel bag, printed off a chat website for flight attendants. She’s smiling, looking pert in her uniform,
with a silver medallion on a chain.
The last time we flew together was Chicago to Los Angeles , and
on to Honolulu
“They tried to give me room 800 at
the hotel last night,” she told me. “I
made them change it.”
Flight attendants practice certain
superstitions. You don’t take a room
number associated with a doomed flight.
800 is one that we all avoid.
These days, so is 93. And 911.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’d have kept it. I think seeing a ghost would be cool.”
“The ghosts of two hundred passengers,
all of them pissed off about being dead?
No thank you,” she answered. “They’re
enough trouble while they’re alive.”
Two call lights went off at once,
and our break time was over.
We hit a storm over the
Pacific. The dozing passengers were jerked
awake, and the captain’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker. “We’ve hit a little turbulence. We’ll be fine, but everyone needs to return
to their seats with seat belts fastened, including the flight attendants.”
Which was good and bad. Good because I didn’t have to reassure the passengers. Bad, because there was just a chance that we
weren’t fine.
She was sitting next to me, and I
watched her hand travel to the medallion.
Her lips moved in a silent prayer.
I’ve long since forgotten the prayers
I learned during my family’s annual trips to the temple for the High Holy Days. I think there’s probably a God; the universe
as a giant accident just seems too improbable.
But I don’t really get the point of prayer. God already knows we’re hurtling through the
sky in a hollowed-out chunk of metal at hundreds of miles an hour. It’s not like he’s going to say, “Whoops,
forgot I’d left that storm lying around!”
Jews have been praying for five thousand years, at
sword point and in cattle cars and while being burned at the stake. It doesn’t
do us much good. I’m sure the people on
Flight 800 prayed too. Maybe someone’s
out there, but he sure doesn’t seem to be listening.
Eventually, even being scared can
get boring. I asked, “What’s that medallion?”
“Saint Christopher. I think there’s another saint just for flight
attendants – God knows we deserve one – but
you can’t go wrong with Saint Chris. He
protects all travelers.”
“See, Jews don’t need saints for
that,” I told her. “We’ve perfected
traveling over the last five thousand years.
We always keep a bag packed.”
“Wait, does that mean flight
attendants are the Lost Tribe of Israel?”
“Could be. But instead of God, flight attendants get the
captain, who only thinks he’s God.”
That was March. September of that year collapsed into a
single day for me, when I stood frantically ad libbing to the passengers as to
why we were landing in Sacramento Seattle
I could see them searching my face,
trying to divine if something was wrong with the plane. I drew on every poker game I’d ever played,
trying to keep my face casual, hoping no one called my bluff.
I prayed that day. Please,
let no one get up out of their seat.
Please, don’t make me have to guess if it’s a terrorist or just someone
desperate to use the restroom. Please, let no one sneak a phone call and find
out what happened on those other flights.
Please, just get us on the ground.
Please.
Maybe God gets tired of hearing Please.
I avoided coming here for a long
time. But I’m on an unexpected layover
in Pittsburgh
They say there will be a monument
built here. Right now it’s just a field
near Shanksville Pennsylvania
The crash site itself is fenced
off. Nearby there’s a plaque shaped like
an angel, and forty smaller angels, each on a stake like a hollyhock vine. They’re all red, white, and blue, inscribed
with the names of the forty passengers and crew members on Flight 93.
The rain has kept most people away
today. The chain link fence is stuffed
with flowers, ribbons, teddy bears, and notes.
And flags, I didn’t know there were so many flags in the whole
country. There are a lot of foreign
flags too, visitors paying their respects from Mexico ,
Israel , France , Australia ,
Iran
I’m sitting here in the rain, a
semi-agnostic Jew with a Catholic amulet in each hand, wanting desperately to
believe that someone hears us when we pray, even if he doesn’t listen, even if
he lets evil happen anyway. Because
that’s still less awful than the thought that we’re alone in the universe, and
that brief moment of life was all she got.
I want to drag God down here, push his face into the fence and demand an
explanation.
A rock leaning against the fence
reads “Pray for peace,” as if that was an answer, but I can’t possibly pray as
hard as she must have in those final minutes.
God, if faith was supposed to be tested, somebody failed the test. Somebody, you or me.
I find the angel with her name, and
wrap the medallion chain around it. I
want to light the candle, but the matches are soaked by now.
“Please,” I say.
I leave it there unlit, helpless against the elements,
hoping she knows that I’d light her way home if I could.
SHORT FICTION - Third Place
Colleen Murphy
Somebody
I spend most of my time in these halls. I
mop the dirt and the piss off the floors and scrub greasy handprints from the
walls. I think Catherine has me clean so people who come here looking for a
place to put their used-up parents will be blinded by the pretty shine. Then
they won’t see that they’re just burying their folks alive.
I’ve worked here for twelve years, and it
suits me. I hope the hard work keeps me strong so I’ll never need to live in a
place like this myself. But I never knew anybody who managed to fool life into
looking the other way while he escaped his lot. That is, except for Sam.
Sam’s son Tony brought him here last
spring. Catherine – the boss lady - was wearing that big grin she uses when she
sees money coming. She took Sam’s nice red suitcase and fussed over them in the
lobby while I relocked the door. For someone always so bent on convincing
people that everyone loves it here, she spends a lot of time making sure no one
can just decide to up and go. I hear once a woman made it down the block to the
diner, but they sent her right back. That was before Catherine took the place
over and locked it down tighter than a fist holding cash.
Sam smiled big while Catherine was
checking him in. He kept patting Tony on the shoulder, saying “My boy Tony!” But
Tony looked like he felt every one of those pats like he was being whipped for kicking
the dog.
The first few weeks, Tony came almost every
day. I’d pass by Sam’s door and hear Sam asking to go back to his home in St.
Louis. Tony would just try and distract him with reruns of Johnny Carson on the
video player he brought.
One
day I was rolling my cart by the line of people waiting for their little cups of
pills, and I about ran into Sam. He was stopped in the middle of the hall,
staring at the wall.
When a nurse came and pulled him back to
the line, I rolled by and saw what he had been looking at so hard. Someone had written
the word “somebody” on the wall with a black marker. It started about two
inches big and then trailed off at the end, like whoever wrote it ran out of
steam. It’d been up there about four months. It was about eye level to a tall
man, and Catherine is way short. That’s why she hadn’t yelled at me to clean it
off yet. I don’t know who wrote it, but then that would make it less
interesting. If I knew, then I could guess what they were trying to say. Like,
“somebody stole my sandwich.” Or more likely, “somebody help me.”
After a while, Sam got more caught in
the tangles in his brain, like people here do. He started talking about a different home, on
an island. He said he wanted to go fishing, and eat beef stew with his friends.
Then he’d ask about people that you just knew hadn’t been around for ages, like
his mom.
Tony started coming around less. It
happens. The guilt and sadness is harder for the ones on the outside. In here,
the dementia might be awful but those clouds in the head can be pretty soft,
too. The day Sam asked about his little boy Tony was the last time Tony came.
Sam told me about the island once. I
like talking about fishing, and Sam just liked to talk. He said that his
ancestors were royalty in Hawaii, and that he was a real somebody there. He
said home was a place called Kukuihale, and he had me say it back until I got
it right. Sam said it had the bluest water and the greenest valleys, and told
me stories about how it all got that way.
Stories with gods and volcanoes, like I never heard before. I swear when
he talked about his home it was like we were both being lifted right out of
this place, and I could smell the beef stew.
Eventually, Sam got depressed. He stopped
talking and started walking in circles, dozens of them every day. He’d go down
the hallway and past the men who sit in the TV room with their jaws all slack.
Then he’d go out into the yard and up past “wheelchair alley,” where the five
residents in wheelchairs are lined up each day in the shade. Then he’d circle
into the lobby and back down the hallway to start over again.
When Catherine was in, she’d get tired
of Sam walking by the desk and she’d have one of us orderlies lock him in his
room. She said it was for his safety. He never made a sound. He’d be in there
for hours, sometimes through dinner. Then one of the nicer nurses would think
to bring him something to eat and take him into the men’s room to clean him up.
Eventually, Catherine started making him wear diapers. At that point I started
averting my eyes when I passed him, out of respect.
Then one morning in August, Sam was
gone.
It was like he just disappeared into
thin air, through a locked door and all. A nurse went to get him for breakfast,
opened the door and found a neatly made bed but no Sam.
While everyone was up front dealing with
police, I looked into Sam’s closet. No red suitcase. I sat down and thought on
that a spell. Then I got up and went down the hall to that spot across from the
pill line. I guess you could say I had a feeling.
I looked and there it was, the word “somebody”,
just like always. But now there was another word after it: “again”. Somebody
again.
They haven’t found him yet. I heard Tony
sued Catherine but then dropped it because insurance paid plenty. To this day I
wonder what happened to Sam. Logic tells me that he didn’t have any money and wasn’t
right in the head. Logic tells me that he’s either on the streets or dead.
But sometimes I let logic go. I imagine Sam
managed to escape his lot in life. I imagine him packing that bag with just a
change of clothing, and maybe some muffins or crackers he had saved. I imagine
him waiting each night, checking his door until finally some tired orderly forgot
to lock it. I imagine him taking off that damned diaper and waiting until the
night nurse went in back to watch TV. I imagine him taking the keys from the
desk and unlocking the door. And then I imagine him finding his way to the blue
ocean waters and green valleys of Kukuihale, where his friends were waiting for
him with that good beef stew. And I imagine that the next morning, Sam went
fishing.
As I said, I’m a simple man.
FLASH FICTION - First Place
Brenda Bellinger
In the Blink of an Eye
I can see you looking at
me. If you watch carefully, my left eye may blink. I’m sure they’ve told you
it’s the only way I can communicate – two blinks for yes, one blink for no. I
know you’re here to assess my condition, to see if your staff will be able to
manage my care at your nursing home. I was told you’ve had other ALS patients
and that I would be comfortable there. Comfortable. That’s an interesting word.
What is comfort to someone who can no longer sit, stand, or lie down on their
own? Someone who is fed identical meals of formula through a stomach tube
because she can no longer swallow? Comfort implies a sense of well-being. No
bed sores, for example.
You look like you spent
some time putting yourself together this morning, right down to your carefully
applied lip liner. No one had to wash or comb your hair and sponge your
backside to make you presentable. I don’t remember the last time my hands were
washed, or held. I can’t move them or see them now. This all started with my
right hand. I kept dropping things and couldn’t seem to open a jar. I was only
60. That was five years ago. Now I’m a prisoner in this hospital bed in my own
home, my mind the only part of me that is still relatively intact. Thank god I
never had children. I would hate for them to see me like this.
You’re making notes. Every
once in a while you flash a condescending smile in my field of vision. I don’t
appreciate that. Clearly, you’re a business woman. I used to be one too. You
look at me and see an opportunity for revenue. Are you calculating my life
expectancy? It is less than you think.
“Mary, can you hear me?”
Two blinks.
“I have a bed waiting for
you at Riverside. The room is lovely. It has just been repainted in fresh
peach.”
I’m waiting.
“We can arrange for you to
move in tomorrow.”
One blink.
“Would you prefer to wait
a few more days?”
One blink.
“Don’t you want to move to
our facility? We have excellent 24 hour care.”
One blink.
“I’ll speak to your
doctor. He sent a referral because he felt this was best for you.”
I don’t know what time it
is but it’s dark when Dr. Howard arrives and my niece lets him in. He pulls up
a chair and takes my hand. His is warm.
“Mary, we’ve talked about
your prognosis and the level of care you require. It won’t be long before you
will need a ventilator.”
One blink.
“Do you understand what
I’m saying?”
Two blinks.
“I can imagine it must be
very difficult for you to leave your home but if we are going to do our best to
keep you alive for as long as we can…”
I blink once.
FLASH FICTION - Second Place
Ann Neumann
The Moment of Reckoning
The
child on the doctor’s table lay motionless, her eyes wide, her breaths shallow, not unlike her father now, eighty years
later, lying in a hospital bed, seeing again that dimly lit room.
The
child is almost sixty now, with children of her own. She sits beside her father,
watches the illness take him. He’s been unable to speak for weeks, death’s
first triumph.
He remembers.
“How
many stitches, doctor?” the child’s mother asked, shrinking back. They’d both
been afraid of her father, for good reason.
The
doctor bent over her. “How did she get the gash?”
When
her father struck her, he didn’t know she would skid across the floor into the
heating vent. He silenced his wife’s eyes, avoided the doctor’s.
“She
tripped,” he said.
He’d
also struck her earlier in the week. He’d told her to walk inside the crosswalk.
Instead, she’d walked on the white line, one slow step after another, never straying
outside the painted stripe. She didn’t listen, that’s what, he’d told himself.
Well, this will make her listen.
He’d
struck her the day before the accident too for screwing her face up the moment
he took the photo. “Open your eyes and close your mouth!” he’d yelled at her.
She’d opened her mouth and closed her eyes. She didn’t listen, that’s what.
His
wife had finally left him, as she should have. And his other children kept a
safe distance. But she, she sits beside him. Her hair falls in gray strands over
her forehead, over the scar.
The
child had come too close to the new baby, had tried to run up to peer inside
the cradle. He’d meant only to push her back. Maybe. Four-year-olds shouldn’t
be so slight. She’d lain quietly in the back seat as they’d driven through the
night to the clinic. He felt bad. Of course he did. He felt bad every time
before and every time after.
Is
this what grown men did as they lay dying, he thinks, inhabit buried memories?
Somewhere
along the way, this daughter had found religion. Maybe from him. He’d been a preacher,
after all. She’d returned, asked him to walk her down the aisle, sent him birthday
cards from the grandchildren. He’d been a good grandpa, maybe now even a good
dad. The scar always reminded him, though, even when the hair covered it.
A
nurse comes in, checks his tubes. She is young, pretty. But he sees only his
daughter. He needs to ask her.
“What,
Dad?” She leans close to him, her hair falling to the side.
He
thinks the question that his lips can’t speak. He breathes it on his shallow
breaths. How many stitches?
“Oh,
Dad,” she says. “Don’t you know?”
He
does know. But he needs her to tell him one more time.
Seven?
he breathes.
“No,
Dad,” she says softly. “Not seven. Seventy times seven.”
He closes his eyes.
How sweet, he thinks, that the final word is a number.
FLASH FICTION - Third Place
Gordon McPherson
Apocalypse
A
perfectionist, he merely wanted to complete his thesis, examining the hidden
influence of Revelation on Mick Jagger’s music. He had maintained his academic
seclusion in order to cleanse his work of any errors despite the increasing
turmoils of the world outside. Nevertheless, he recalled his growing unease
over recent coincidences that should have no place in a well ordered universe
where the laws cause and effect prevailed.
On
the first occasion, he remembered his scholarly pleasure when, after hours of
internal debate, he corrected an ambiguous usage, changing tincture to colour. That
very day, a race riot in the city slums reverberated onto the international
stage. He felt mildly sympathetic that the word colour had caused anguish for others as well and then dismissed
this as mere coincidence.
A
week or so later, after careful consideration of all the literary implications,
he decided that the word revolution was
somewhat pretentious, and replaced it with the more modest uprising. Within the hour, the media was ablaze with downloads from
The Brotherhood, proclaiming an uprising against the Chinese backed government
in Canada. This gave him pause. Did that single act of replacement actually result
in those guerilla successes? Was it more than coincidence? And a few days
later, with the sudden collapse of the global economy, wasn’t its pitiful state
a better explanation for that catastrophe than his correction of an error of
style, where he substituted the word crash
for the more idiomatic thump?
It
had to be some kind of fluke. It couldn’t be his fault. And he was going to take
it upon himself to prove it! Scouring his Word document, he reluctantly replaced
the word retort
with the less confrontational exchange. The
word itself was full of benignity, suggesting a gracious give and take between
equals. If it had any effect, it would surely be to rectify the prevailing
economic chaos. What would Fate do with that? He turned on the television and
waited.
For
a while, nothing happened beyond the usual outrages of muggings, break-ins and
corporate corruption, but, after an hour or so, this relatively quiet rash of
criminality was trumped by some dreadful news. Mainstream Southern Baptists,
quoting their bible, had nuked Salt Lake City. Mainstream Mormons, quoting
back, had likewise annihilated Houston. The Air Force intervened, punishing both
insurgencies. The TV was alive with that ominous phrase, nuclear exchange. He was horrified. It was no fluke. His PhD was a dark
conduit to something beyond the rational. Dare he even touch his work now?
But
then he noticed the error. Regardless of Megadeaths, Ground Zeros and
Hiroshimas, he could only stare instead at his computer screen and at that
mistaken heading - Apocalips. Despite
the aptness of the pun, he had to rectify
that final blemish! Trembling, he typed in the correction. He would have the
final word.
POETRY - First Place
Russell Read
At Old Faithful Down the Line
He marks the steel pipe with a grease pencil,
slams it into the pipe machine and spins the lock closed
with the joy of being where he is meant to be.
Joyous because his wife swells with his electricity.
a spark which decades from now will leap
across a shallow bay to fire a grandchild’s heart
Good work is how the dying should hand down their lives
not the way of his ancestors who continue giving him things.
He sees his father in eyes of the Utah coal miners,
hears his grandfather’s voice in Baptist preachers.
They poke bony fingers out of the mud
with stuff he doesn’t want:
cracked buttons,
worn dice, a shoe fetish, a taste for Jack Daniels.
Whatever is broken or shamed, whatever the dead can’t love,
whatever they can’t cut into curtains or linoleum,
the blizzard of trash and treasure fills every corner of his
life.
Nobody will know if he fails to cut this pipe
perfectly.
He could skip the task of awling out the slivers,
but as heir to so much debris, he is careful.
He doesn’t want to cut corners.
A perfect cut may keep a bit of trash from a future life,
and ignite his spark somewhere down the line.
Snow like powder sugar dissolves into rain
origin determined by ends, ends determined by beginnings
a carousal of rising and fallings like elephants in their
gold banners
parading around the center ring of the Big Top trunks to
tails, shuffling through sawdust
circling the center, the motionless hub of all that rises
and falls through time.
Winter streams down my neck as I wait on the platform,
fingers stiff with age, fancies like church bells echoing in
my ears:
spam, passwords, the sickening weight of junk,
distracted by distractions from distractions,
entranced by flying worries:
When will the geyser blow? Why do I sleep alone? Does my life belong to me?
The parade of elephants under the Big Top
heavy toes muffled in sawdust each dusty bloom a valuation
of my life.
POETRY - Second Place
Nicole Dorfman
The Night Bus
The
Turkish men speak in loud, distressed tones
rearranging
seats.
Not one
will sit beside me, a woman, alone.
A small
boy is shuffled up the aisle
and
slips past me to the window.
Leaving
Istanbul on the night bus east.
*
I think
of the long thread of war
woven
through the generations
along
the Silk Road passages
a
tapestry of scars and salve.
*
The boy
soon nods
against
the cold black glass.
I listen
to his even breath
above
the constant grind of engine.
His
grey-bearded grandfather with shining grey-green eyes
has been
watching me, curious, concerned.
He points
out the muted edges of a lake
and
speaks a name I try, but cannot repeat.
A
crescent moon slides among ripples of black
yet
finds little else to reflect in.
*
I wonder
how often this man has seen
reflected
in dark water, the moon,
how often
war has snared him,
how many
times he’s prayed for peace
and how
he has come to transcend it all
with
this beautiful open face.
*
He
asks if the women shawled
in sleep
across the aisle
are my
sisters. “Kiz Kardesh?”
And
something is quieted
inside
of me
suddenly
I
understand and answer “yes”.
POETRY - Third Place
Laura Apol
Takotsubo*
(Withheld per Author Request)
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