BAY AREA POETS REVIEW 

Rowe Takes Grand Prize In BAPSR’s

Spring 2010 Contest

We are thrilled to announce the results of our very first BAY AREA POETS SEASONAL REVIEW contest. Our Mystery Judges donned their Mad Caps and wrangled for hours, finally concluding that their tastes warranted two separate lists of 1st, 2nd, 3rd prize-winners, and four honorable mentions chosen by each. We received 69 poems and each poem was read a minimum of four to five times; the judging was completely “blind.”

We received poems on many topics, from metaphysical speculations to stumbling out of a bar at 3 a.m. (um, perhaps those themes are related?); poems about local places, like Oakland’s Lake Temescal, the refineries along our shorefronts, the streets of our towns; poems about faraway places brought close by t.v. and novels: Haiti, Chicago, the Bronx, and Kahowani (your guess is as good as mine).Thanks to everyone who participated. 

Now to the honorees:

Fifteen special poems touched our hearts and opened our minds. GRAND PRIZE goes to JOHN ROWE of Albany. We added this category because three of Rowe’s poems were tagged for top-placements by our judges, with San Francisco‘s A.D. Winans close on Rowe‘s heels. Rowe  is no stranger to Bay Area writers: he is presides over the Bay Area Poets Coalition and frequently appears at open mics. Congrats, John!

1st Prize
Freud’s Cigar
by Dale Jensen (Berkeley)

the heat you engender when you cut deep into the bone
its marrow imaginary as a subterranean river
dream of the voices that have kept you waiting
deep inside the meat of your computer
electrical waterways   passages of zeroes and dots
open socket to a paradise that seems too wet to touch
and a clown’s nose at the end of the trail

    congratulations     kid
    you’re in heaven

painted on the inside of your eye is an image of the empire state building
in thirty or so years it’ll have been there a century
it’s still in front of your eyeball when you sleep
as you walk your leggy poodle round and round it
which leg   the dog sniffs   which leg to use
everything’s a fire hydrant sometimes
and the butcher shop’s closed
and all the loose bones are locked in and safe
so which leg to lift now
which leg to lift

1st Prize
Winter Poem
by A.D. Winans (San Francisco)

It’s been in the thirties
Two nights in a row
And I’m sitting here freezing
My butt off with a hacking cough
Waiting for the power company
To come and fix the problem
But it isn’t so bad
When you consider 9/11
The war on Iraq
And that d.a. levy took a rifle
Between his legs
And blew his brains out
Which has nothing and yet everything
To do with this poem

Thirty-degree nights won’t kill you
But they don’t bring comfort either
The trouble with being single
The trouble with being seventy
Is knowing you could die alone
And go unnoticed for weeks
With nothing but rotting flesh
To tell your story
And a few poems to remember
You by

2nd Prize
The Wild God
by John Rowe (Albany)

The world will not surrender
until you surrender

then you are released to roam
in the body of a wolf

to climb the slate mountain
at night, without fear of

heart becoming heavy,
without the give--the breaking
away of earth shards under foot.
Ascend to the crest

of that tower of stone
where full moon illumination

lights eye whites in pitch-black
as if hatching to release new life.

Below in valley of kingdom’s
darker side, one wail ruptures

stillness. How will the cry
be defined? For those suddenly

awake with fear or exhilaration,
they will imagine their rebirth

and rise to that sound wavering
in suspended time.

Name yourself the wild god.
Wherever you are, you are

full of hunger, free to prowl
under a sky of shooting stars.

2nd Prize  

Pigeon Feathers
by A.D. Winans

Holy men on every street corner
Selling fake myths
Nuns in white with virgin toes
And mushroom dreams inside their loins
I’m being followed by
Dick Tracy look-a-likes
With flat feet and bug eyes
The wolf’s eerie howl haunts my dreams
Evangelists pickpocket my empty wallet
My one good eye
Photographs the crime scene
The police lineup consists
Of six pygmies and a ham sandwich

Ladybugs ride on the
Wings of butterflies
On a one way trip to Never Land
God wanders the universe
Carrying Jesus piggyback
On his way to a Dylan concert
The Madonna confiscates my dreams
Holds me for a ransom I can’t pay
The insatiable night eats my thoughts
I’ve become a one-legged tightrope walker
Without a safety net
My poems turn into pigeon feathers
Fly off with the wind

3rd Prize
Night Sky
by Mary Loughran (Alameda)

Colors drop like stones into a deep pool of forgetfulness.
Harsh and clanging tones he flings into the night dark sky.
Fireworks, lamenting clouded landscape, fizzle as they rise
within him. Fear rains, and nowhere do surrounding spirits
manifest, protect. Every night is Halloween without children.

Cloud masses mourn white in the East, where friends by phone
lament pale hue, as he relates it, lament his stormy black
forgetfulness, “The pain?” They do not say this. Fear at surgery
impending drenches all in sweat that tears, and tears the heart.

Black, background color of night stars, dazzling black, black
jet beads and lace, symphonic black Mahler, black fingers playing
sax--black’s now a wall of terror between him and his life,
“Can’t tell what’s what ‘til we go in,” the surgeons say.

Under pale blue cap he smiles relaxed, surrenders to the undertow,
the effortless drifting into a pool of blankness beyond time where
moment turns hour, two . . . The sudden jolt startles Jonah, beached upon the shore, groggy to know where he’s landed.

Surgical waters of forgetfulness recede. Small stones eddy at the
water’s edge, Amethyst for healing hurts, like gemstones at his lover’s
throat . . . Royal blue for calm repose, the dress she wore, the ocean
in her eyes. Amber, ochres, warm sunsets red, orange, pink. Deep
forest greens, spring time lightened, draw pain outward dissolve
with morphine. Memory’s mettle returns silver, his father’s watch, in
gold, the ring of his wife. Beneath the stones, within the mire of brown
earth tones, tree bark, root, rock ridge and adobe clay, he spots the
peck of dirt not yet swallowed whole, touches grandma, work, desire.

The nurse telling dirty jokes in the hospital corridor, to make him smile
on bad nights, grins as he passes, passing gas at 3:00 a.m. His IV stand,
a wayward pup straying into walls and doors, avoids the window at
hallway’s end toward which he inches, arriving just as strength gives  way.
Benched, he moans. Benched, he breathes, squirts a hit morphine
from the tube fastened on his hospital gown . . . clicks. . . waits, head
bowed, as if . . . . Muscles release, breathing expands, neck lifts
from posture of prayer. Then, rising, stomach close in arms’ embrace,
he turns outward, toward, and belly laughs triumph into the dark night sky.

3rd Prize
Higher
by John Rowe (Albany)

There’s a danger
in taking things too far
like the time I insist on
riding the elevator
to the 121st floor
in a building with only 12 floors.
Believe me, I get to where
I am going,
but when those doors
slide open
my next move is
stepping out onto a cloud
that has no intention
of holding me up.
I fall, fall a long way . . .
Eventually make it back
down to earth,
luckily landing
on a large haystack
in the middle of some
farmland in the Midwest.
Startle a grazing cow.
Chickens squawk and scurry.
Otherwise, the incident
appears to go unnoticed.
I shake it off, examine my lesson:
If there is ever a next time,
I’ll skip the wild ride.
I may again try to rise
higher than high,
but I’m starting right here
grounded. Going to practice
upward mobility
if in the meantime
I can collect enough feathers
to put together
a pair of wings.