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Winners of the 1998 Michael Egan Poetry Contest
Return to poetry table of contents / To 1997 winnersThe B.H.E.L Vegetable Market
We came to it, Usha Akella Whistle-Bird On A String
Sweet, brave, brown woman-bird June Owens Hunger
Your words Bryan Walpert
a carnival in the distance
foreshadowed by a mass of two-wheelers
entangled in monochromatic cycles
under the Hyderabad wintry sun
that was just right on the skin,
the film roll taut and ready,
passive and crisp,
as I moved into
frames of reference for myself
with each click,
one month more
and I would hold my country
in piles of 32 and 24
sorting out memories relived,
memories gone to sleep in dark black chambers
would awaken into a riot of color-
these vegetables, fruits and sulky vendors
on the dust
unpackaged by cellophane.
The betel leaves of condensed green
whirled and piled
like multi-layered exotic flowers,
fiery souls of the sun
the insides juicy and cool
frolicked on the hay
heaps of chilies
blistering and beautiful
crackling red
in spluttering fury,
piled high
by a placid white-clothed vendor
in squatting serenity,
to be around them
felt to be around the
possibilities of fire,
yams, beans, carrots, peanuts, cucumbers
sold by tangy-tongued sellers
who spat paan
over a roll of the tongue
as a streaming missile
of juicy red intent that
frisbeed into the air
and curled and dried on the dust,
long-legged snake gourds
dangled over the edge of ledges
in ash-green,
plump purple brinjals burst with passion among
piles of high leafy vegetables that
spilled out of jute sacks
as hibernating creatures
racing out of the earth
for a taste of the sun,
carts of white rangolis on the edges
with things you can discern but can't name,
piles of color on the ground,
rangoli powder
in chatak pink,
shocking red,
and twilight blue...
sold by faces that had no past, no future,
set into the present with awareness,
a baby on the lap rocked to sleep
while one hand counted change
and the other settled a shifting pallu into place,
the children peed by the trees
and the cows and the buffaloes
sauntered into rotten tomatoes
dropping their selves behind
in indolent green dung,
vermilion bindis rose on chasted foreheads
like mid-day suns
telling the story of a culture-
a wild woman decked with jewelry on a naked body
unafraid of her splendor on the dust.
1st Place, 1998 Michael Egan Memorial Poetry Contest
(On Edgar Degas' Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando)
They tell you to be careful
but being careful
isn't part of the art...
-Sandra Adelmund Witt, Circus Art
Of strange plumage and perchless feet,
Suspended in the apricot and orange vault,
Turning on a shaft of held breaths,
Costumed in white luminescence
Garlanded with gold, you are
As beautiful as any ballet dancer
Degas ever dreamed, pretty
As a whistle-bird on a string.
Sweet, brown, brave bird-woman
In wrinkled tights and rolled-down stockings,
Topknot flying over your tiny ears,
Degas knew your soul, caught you
Swishing space, loved you enough
To sign his name small, give you a taut
Tether, that rope that sets you free
And twirling, no care for self or sex
Or pain or applause, escape depending
On teeth and clench, ligaments and jawbone,
Mental focus, physical power, female grace,
And this pastelled light, incredibly soft.
Then, it is a matter of impressions:
Columns and arches, roundness of roof,
Roundness of body caught in mid-song,
Mid-flight, mid-moment, the way Degas
Liked things, you full of sky-desire
Grappling with gravity as you might
With a lover, flinging your earth-wings,
Twisting your body to gain a rhythm,
A tempo, thrusting your hip for push.
Perhaps it is just canvas and illusion:
As though you were hoisted
From an unseen floor by unknown means,
Over the heads of unseen audience,
Hoisted on great unheard huffs
Of sustained air, lifted up; as though you
Have grabbed the rope in the fist
Of your teeth and the Cirque Fernando,
Not you, La La, starts a slow circle
Like a carrousel, while you strike
A dangerous-looking pose, there
In the ceiling's encircling light.
There is something vibrating inside you
Like a plucked string, the toes of your
Shoes still feeling for the floorboards,
And I have looked at you too long, brown bird.
My heart heaves from your strain, my neck
Stiffens with your effort, there is a simpatico
Ache in the muscles of my mandible, and I
Wonder: is it lonely up there, Miss La La_
2nd place, 1998 Michael Egan Poetry Contest
hang in my stomach
as I gaze at you
across the table,
and think about how
you chose this restaurant
this table this night,
how you pored over
the menu, asked
that specials be repeated,
twice,
requested a few more minutes
before making your selection,
how your eyes widened
when the food arrived,
how they closed over
the softest smile
as you inhaled
the scent,
how your hands shook as
they felt for knife and fork
and cut the first tender piece,
then-
how after only a few bites,
you dumped the utensils
back where you got them,
and decisively pushed
it all away.
But, mainly, I think of
how you flipped your
hair out of your eyes,
shrugged almost imperceptibly
and said those words,
those words,
"I changed my mind,"
then how casually
offhandedly
you tossed your napkin
over the chicken,
growing cold on your plate,
your eyes already
on the exit.
3rd Place, 1998 Michael Egan Memorial Poetry Contest
Winners of the 1997 Michael Egan Poetry Contest
Return to
poetry table of contents
/ To 1998 winners
MARSHALL ISLAND, PENOBSCOT BAY, 1995
Time enough Douglas Heinrichs THE UNBORN
I cannot sleep. Tillie Friedenberg IN THE POEM I AM WRITING
We spend less time talking bout Meredith Males TIPSY
The morning-glories seem Steven C. Cunningham
tacking off out to Stonington
just south to Marshall Island
to soak heat from her granite limbs.
Smooth and buff
as when his modest goddess
first rose from the depths and froze.
Still hot from innumerable suns
of August
that rise, fill her with their radiance, then fall
in turn behind the Camden Hills
barely marking but for the algae in tidal pools.
Risk enough
though to plunge into her evergreen heart.
Witness here how time has compromised her,
how life has ground her to ferns and weed spruce
atop muck rich in tangled roots and tendrils.
Move softly in the dank Labyrinth
as in easy abandon to a trusted lover.
Soon enough
you emerge again embraced by her
clear white arms, your boat still bobbing
playfully in the glimmering sea.
FIRST PLACE, 1997 Michael Egan Poetry Contest
A splotch of yolk on the porch,
failed bird,
mother bird screeching,
protesting her loss.
All night disembodied words
circle, flutter piece-meal,
search for a poem to grow into.
They leave long shadows:
the bird will never fly;
the poem will never be born.
SECOND PLACE, 1997 Michael Egan Poetry Contest
frozen peas
and the loose thing at the bottom
of the refrigerator that falls
off on your foot when you slam
the door too hard.
We speak to each other as if these
daily occasions: breakfast, dinner,
were momentous; we do not sneak looks
at the mail or run
when the telephone rings
and when I describe the mists
rising from the pond at dawn
or call you to the door to point out
the fat yellow moon through the clouds,
you do not roll your eyes and say "romantics"
in that tired way.
Deer outside the window pick through
leaves on their tentative feet
and the sight of them becomes
the highest priority;
on the stove nothing boils over or
is scorching in its pan.
Truth, here, is not an enormous envelope
with peculiar edges
I slide around inside of
and your hand resting on my shoulder
is a casual gesture
significant as a week of new mornings
rising one by one between the pines like polished copper
or amber beads of Czechoslovakian glass.
THIRD PLACE, 1997 Michael Egan Poetry Contest
to have paused their twining
flow, snuggled into themselves
for the afternoon siesta.
They've already filled the yard,
poured over fence, into garden,
through and around tomatoes,
squash and me, and carrots
now blooming above and bitter
in the ground.
I am beneath the surface
of the morning-glories,
squatting as if in silent protest
of my alienating height; only
near ground can I smell the dill grow,
watch a bee prying
into one reluctant flower
like a new-born blind and mouthing
for a missing nipple, wanting
only to drink, like this man, still
thirsty, dragging through my gate,
past gardens oblivious. He suckles rusty
water from the spigot and teeters
towards the dark porch nobody uses anymore.
He sleeps, nearly fetal-like,
with the morning-glories.
HONORABLE MENTION, 1997 Michael Egan Poetry Contest
