Poetry Festival

Fourth Annual Jacaranda Poetry Contest Winners 2010
On behalf of Pasco Arts Council and the Fourth Annual Jacaranda Poetry Festival,
we would like to extend our gratitude to our distinguished judges,
William Boden and Kurt Wilt, Ph.D

First Prize                              

Fever
(Peggy Lee recorded Fever in1958.)

Teenage hips felt the steady brushes against

the drum, the pulse of the bass so slick and luscious

I had to move in some way. I sensed

the fever, didn’t care about the fuss

over the dark, insinuating beat,

the words that promised to love and treat me right.

Her voice sizzled, climbed, turned up the heat,

pushing me to be Miss Fahrenheit,

waiting for the one who would anoint

me with the cure, some skinny, acned boy

snapping his fingers in eager counterpoint.

After Fever no point in being coy;

Too late, they banned her from the radio.

The music, those words were all we needed to know.

 

 

Second Prize (Tie, first of two)

In Bryant Park
 

In your gray grandfather hat,

Your face and arms, in fact, all of you

Had that just-return-from-Florida glow—

Soft, golden, beautiful.

How then could I, too,

Look beautiful to you when I was in

Treatment for a sudden, startling disease?

Somehow I had become your mirror.

 

Round and marble and muted brown,

The water fountain cools us in the summer sizzle.

At the bottom of the lime green pond

Are wishing pennies

Like motionless copper fish.

Round and light aluminum and deep green,

The tables where we sit

Beneath a matching umbrella,

You give me a soft kiss—

Like silk and nectar from a delicate flower.

When breast cancer only wishes

To deplete me more and more,

I have found this moment

To own as my very own,

And I remain alive.

 

We recline together

Clothed in white,

In the cool, summer grass,

A sea of everlasting green,

You said I was a goddess,

I said you were a god,

But you declined.

And to our right in magical response,

The Empire State Building was lit

That night

With a brilliant crown of emerald lights.

 

So many leagues below to fathom

Here in this green sea.

High maples and ivy beds and flowers

Vased in huge, gray planters,

Placed along stone slab walkways.

Surprise sights through numerous branches—

From the thick foliage bordered

Around the park peek

Traffic lights doing their timely dance

Of green-yellow-red.

But it is the green that works in tandem

To the sound of the rest of the trees.

Here only a soothing sprig of Nature.

For beyond are the canyons of side streets,

The fjords of the city.

As we sit in a large rectangle box

This green city block,

The noise is not so far away—

Horns honk,

Buses rumble,

Brakes squeal,

A muted cacophony of hissing, throbbing, trembling.

Buildings come in various tall sizes,

With windows lit sporadically

By workaholic lights.

These concrete structures with endless glassy shimmers,

Reflect the dusk

Against a deepening blue poster sky.

As a lone trumpet from a CD player

Wafts through the calm of the oncoming night,

And yellow street lamps go on.

This is the richest city in the world,

With its burning neon life,

But buildings do fall,

Steel beams can crush bones,

The city was deeply wounded,

Only a handful of years ago,

But not fatally,

And not tonight,

And the city remains alive.

 

However, even the immovable does not last forever,

Despite a thousand wishes in the fountain centerpiece.

What could have been here in this park

10,000 years ago?

What kind of tree or mound,

Haven to a hill creature,

And many other crawling things?

What kind of creature perhaps chirped

Besides a little brook?

Or maybe there was a glacier-formed rock

And a steep climb for some Indian tribe?

Or what will be here 10,000 years from now?

What will appear in that mist—

Leaves and lights of green-yellow-red?

And what creatures will linger in its domain?

Will it be flat or raised mountain high?

Or underwater in the sea

Where the true copper fishes swim?

Will there be entirely new buildings,

Odd-shaped and stranger yet,

Their occupants dreaming in starry wonder

Of the black void overhead?

Or would they already have been there?

 

But it is not tonight.

For on this very night,

Before the press of crowds

Running for high stairways,

And the subway rattlings on the way home,

The screeching of the rails

In sparking friction,

I am here in this time and place,

Here with you,

And despite an awful sickness

I still can look beautiful to you.

In this place of amazement and rest,

Is a much-needed respite,

And a sanctuary of fathomless green.

 

                                                Eleanor Remeczky

Second Prize (Tie, second of two) 

Six Weeks, and Dead

What remains of the cribbed and stiffened child

Whelms her family more with awe than draining grief.

Beyond this pain-filled room looms endless cold.

Chilling death stooped low choosing this one.

Like the painted bonnet she will always wear,

The child becomes object coldly done.

Voices whisper how beautifully prepared,

A doll sleeping, her soul now angelized,

But these are kindly lies.

All words wound this hushed, cold night.

See—the cheeks too cotton-filled, the eyelids

Tightly sewn, the tight skin looks rubbered.

Yet, what can be real this terrible long night?

See the mother, too young to nurse such pain,

The grandparents, crushed, cannot help.

The baby’s death ruptured a fearful order of things,

If there is purpose here, or plan, or hope,

Look for it too in a fisherman’s knot, a blind man’s blackness,

Or in lightning’s flashing.

In muted tones, our family softly calls Death names,

But nothing out there hears, or sees or cares

Our baby came or went. Now we keep our

Slowly ebbing pain, our crippled hearts and for

This little while, this little hollowed shell.

 
                                  

                                                                                        Daniel Callaghan

      

 

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