Spring 2010 Poetry Winners

  First Place
Dual publication and $75 goes to

Kim Clark of Nanaimo, BC
for Before Midnight, and After Midnight

(our first ever tie for first.. and by the same writer!)

Kim Clark lives on Vancouver Island. Disease and desire,
mothering and the mundane propel her ongoing journey between poetry
and prose. Kim’s work can be found in Body Breakdowns (Anvil Press),
The Malahat Review, All Rights Reserved, Ascent Aspirations, as well
as e-zines and other publications in Canada and the U.S. She has been
an editor for Artistry and Portal, and completed her BA in Creative
Writing at Vancouver Island University.

Second place goes to

Katelyn Kiley of Richmond, VA
for We will be grownups.

Katelyn Kiley earned her BA and her MA, both in English Language and Lit, from the University of Virginia, and is studying poetry in Virginia Commonwealth University's MFA program.

She currently lives in Richmond. She blogs at katelynk.tumblr.com, mostly about what she's been reading. This is her first publication.

Third place goes to

Patricia Gomes of New England
for A Starched Pinafore

Creator of the Octologue, an 8-line syllabic form of poetry, award winning poet Patricia Gomes has been published in countless literary journals and anthologies, both in print and electronically. She is the author of three chapbooks and performs her work extensively throughout the New England area.
The former editor of Adagio Verse Quarterly, she earned a 2008 Pushcart nomination for her poem, One Man’s Claret.  Ms. Gomes won the Sandstar Poetry Award in 2008 for her poem, The Soloist.   Ms. Gomes is the on-line poetry moderator of iVillage’s (ivillage.com) Poets Workshop.

Introducing our Judge, scratch's own Poetry editor, Amber Clark

Amber Clark is a graduate of The College of William & Mary and The Radcliffe Publishing Institute at the Center for Advanced Study at Harvard, she also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University at Charlotte. She teaches English and literature at Northwest Florida State College as well as Gulf Coast Community College.
Most recently, her work can be found in Pebble Lake Review, SandScript,Slow Trains, Underground Window, and Poetry365.

And now for the poems, with notes from Judge and Editor, Amber Clark

1st place TIE:  Before Midnight, and After Midnight


"Juxtaposition of these two pieces together is imperative. I liked the odd construction, a fragmented narrative that obscures intentionally, forces you (reader) to work for meaning.  Inclusion [Exclusion]… Also, there is a quality of resignation and need for repair in these pieces, the sub-textual attempt to make something whole again.  Or perhaps that is the reader’s job. Additionally, there is a sense of a crossing of sorts, midnight being the division street, so to speak: Night and day, youth and age, chosen loneliness and the alternative of companionship.  Making peace with your decisions…and railing against them."

  Before Midnight

You live alone, you don’t mind cold

food or stealing out for eavesdropped lines:

the girl I had

all accidents and confusion

pride is [tempo] 4 now

pain is 4 ever

30 gauge, rust-proofing

red tide, fire under the ocean

You live out loud.

little bits of bangs

* a one-armed bandit pool-shooter

* the way you have to bank the shot

with more than a murmur of Doors in the background

* the hyper-color blood smear on the fight-mat

in the ring on the 40 inch corner screen

news flash: that Buffalo Bill can move his arms and legs

may even walk again

You live a love for a minute

like it’s your first             feeling

                good enough

                                        to name a street after

            Van’s “Wonderful Remark”

            a goodnight kiss and disappearing smile home

You live a line in someone else’s mind
* a rock dropped in conversation.

Are you the woman who fell off the building here?

As though there could only be one

but the answer is a negative to his confessional

looking

alive

for common ground.

AND
After Midnight
A young [of course] McCartney

[Paul with a faux fur collar]

shows up [leaning]

in an ally or plaza or somewhere streetlit

where buildings could fall

[nearby, a waterless fountain]

offering up slot-machine pull-tabs

in the face of my request

for lucid and lusty dreaming.

The odds seem better this way.

And later you relive a dream

[the same oral disturbance]

over and over the years

of teeth

breaking

down

another

break

       up

[4] molars

this time, crumbling and bloody

sockets shredded, wet.

You count teeth in your sleep

will wake to check for the blood

smear on the pillow

play the White Album

hear a blackbird.

2nd place We will be grownups
"
The subject of this poem - the lack of clarity when you are “in-between”, that uncertainty – lets the poem work in analogue, also. The anxiety of growing up, looking backward and forward simultaneously. Trying to press out into the world, but feeling trapped in your own dialogue (“Mostly I wonder what I would say”), between questions and answers.  The tone vacillates between a type of innocent tenderness and a hard and desperate adult edge, one that comes down on the solipsistic and youthful (misdirected?) desire to blame."

We will be grown ups.

I tell you, because we are talking about futures.

I say it as if it’s something we have to make

happen, instead of something thrust upon us

whether we like it or not.

Lately, I’ve been thinking

about answers

and questions.

I wonder what you would say.

But really I wonder

what I would say, mostly.

Probably something about the way

so many of us misinterpret hunger

as emptiness,  who confuse wanting

something with having nothing.

I am reminding myself.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and think

no one else can see me. Not just now, but ever.

Once, I was infatuated with a boy from

the Upper East Side, because he was

a rebound and because of his money mostly but also

the urgent way he kissed me—and I told him, don’t fuck me

over, I told him, what are your intentions.

After devoting two evenings to us, he kissed me

goodbye in the car and I knew I wouldn’t

be hearing from him anymore. Because of the talking.

Because of how I refused to not-talk.

You can blame words for most things.

I usually do.

3rd place: A Starched Pinafore
"As the only attempt at prose poetry in the batch, this piece thematically identifies with that sad edge between childhood naiveté and the disillusionment of adulthood. Invokes a type of Mother Goose fairytale, upturned. An modern allegory, tweaked.  The death of the girl as metaphor. A crossing. Idealism and fantasy vs. realism. The odd ending - the liberated goose reaping the benefits of the girl’s work, is striking. And even the existence of the goose vs. the girl at the end, is a type of irony, as the goose is fantastical. Such a line of thought is interesting to consider."

A Starched Pinafore

When she was seven, she lassoed a passing fat goose with her jump rope and flew it to Paris, collecting cranberries, lemongrass and bath salts along the way.
After a time, she remembered nothing of her life before the goose and often wondered who had taught her to speak and use the toilet like a proper lady.

“How did I get here?  How did we come to be?”  She’d ask the goose once a year, when flying cross-legged over land that looked a bit familiar.  Goose would only shake his head and weep.   “I love you.” she said, stroking his neck.  “You are my husband, I am your wife.”

When she was fourteen, the pair flew over the Red Sea.  By then, the lasso’s fraying frightened them both.  So much so that Goose began to speak:  “I will tell you this much—no one gave birth to you. You are Mother and Father, egg and seed.  You are not my wife; I am not your husband.  I am a goose and you are my jailer.”  Horrified, the girl let go of the rope and
               plunged
                               to
                                       her
                                                                                                    death.

Liberated, Goose was not sad to watch her go.  He flew back to Paris, eating cranberries, sleeping in
lemongrass, and bathing in scented salts along the way.