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| Photo by Lisa Morris |
Judge Connie Walle says she looked for the “wow factor” as she read
submissions for the July Poetry Challenge. And she found it. As third place,
she selected a poem of six short lines per stanza, focused literally on the
vegetable garden:
Zucchini Bread
Silver sky
warns rain
Basket in hand
I rush to the
garden
Red tomatoes
past their
prime
glow amber
Thirsty leaves
cling to
sleeves
Sticky fingers
sort
twist, tug
until I’ve
collected
enough
Cucumbers long
gone
allow
dandelions
to dwell
in dried out
pools
The garden is done
I say aloud
Always more zucchini
One long as my
arm
hides among
stems
strong as celery
ribs
shreds to
exactly
three cups
~ Barbara Toboni
For second place, Walle picked a somewhat less literal poem written in
tercets, a poem that suggests that it is gardens, not fences, that make good
neighbors.
History
is what we keep rereading into months,
decades, the unremembered squares of years
fenced between us, crabgrass, brown-edged lilacs;
is what we memorize like dog-eared almanacs,
or blandly hopeful seed packs
flattened in bottom drawers;
is what—across rusting shelves in backyard sheds—
become our snippets of care and compost,
stacked rectangles of warning. And yet,
we make good neighbors, two yards of well-
mowed yearning, tamed gardeners still coveting
each other’s most unruly seasons.
~ Marjorie Maddox
The first place poem, in free verse, takes the prompt in a
different direction. The poet draws on astrology as well as the garden, as she
writes a memorial poem, a poem that hints at more than it tells.
Martha’s Solar Return In Her Last Saturn Cycle
for Martha Courtot
1942-2000
Here we are, vining into each other at the end
of your 55 between sky and earth,
Weaponized reasons could have detained us at the
border, kept us from this
party, this knowing, this sustaining of the will
to
play, persist, presume to go out to the garden
yet again, in spite of joints and
bones protesting at the bending down, the
carrying of water;
in spite of all inside that whimpers, “What’s
the use? There’s bound to be too much sun or
rain, or if the seed should make its miracle of
fruit
there’s bound to be a critter faster than
myself, to steal it away.”
Look at our poems – see how we’ve chronicled the
tooth marks left by
denizens of realms we never wanted to believe in
and don’t remember beckoning into our mulchy beds
- yes, there’s reams
of evidence against the garden party.
Martha, I love you for your will, your
amendments to the soil, your tending of the
roots, the way you mark the seasons, the
uninvited guests,
the starts that went to seed, the times you
turned away, the volunteers, the
heirlooms harvested. I love you for your fierce
face and for
all the times you turned around
again.
~ Barbara Ruth
Congratulations to the winning poets. Remember that they own copyright to
their poems, so please do not copy and distribute the poems without their
consent. And thanks to Connie Walle for serving as the July judge.
Bios:
Barbara Ruth says she is an old, arthritic,
tree-loving, hypertensive, lesbian, epileptic, fibromyalgic Potowatomee,
Ashkenazi Jewish, Welsh, chemically hypersensitive, neurodivergent daughter of
Yemaya, spoonie, writer and photographer. She lives in San Jose, California USA
in abundant poverty with one woman and one cat, both adorable. She is a repeat winner.
* * *
Sage Graduate Fellow of Cornell University (MFA) and Professor of English
and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, Marjorie Maddox has published eleven
collections of poetry—including True, False, None of
the Above (Poiema Poetry Series); Local News from
Someplace Else
(Wipf and Stock Transplant,
Transport, Transubstantiation, (Yellowglen
Prize); and Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award)—the short
story collection What She Was Saying
(2017 Fomite), and over 450 stories, essays, and poems in journals and
anthologies. Co-editor of Common Wealth:
Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Penn State Press), she also has
published two children’s books with several forthcoming. For more information,
please see www.marjoriemaddox.com.
* * *
Barbara Toboni is a writer, blogger, and poet. Her work has
appeared in literary journals, and anthologies including Cup of Comfort, Sisters Born,
Sisters Found, and The Beat Goes On.
She is the author of two chapbooks: Undertow,
published in 2011, and Water Over Time,
published in 2013. Her website is http://www.barbarasmirror.com/.
Check
back early next month for the August Poetry Challenge. You could be a winner!
©
Wilda Morris
