Love Gone Astray - October Winners

There were a number of excellent poems submitted to the October Poetry Challenge. Each of the three judges selected a different winner. This did not surprise me, since I know that there is always an element of subjectivity in a person’s response to poems.

Grand Prize Winner is Michael Escoubas, whose poem, “Sailor at Subic Bay,” is the only poem selected for first place by a judge that was also picked as second place by another judge. This poem suggests that love that has gone astray may sometimes be restored.

Sailor at Subic Bay

(Hundreds of U.S. Navy ships docked at this deep-water port,

in the Philippines, for R & R, during the Viet Nam war.)

Her name is Faye

enticing

with cocoa-butter skin,

mahogany eyes,

onyx hair that shines

like polished Navy shoes,

falling, falling, falling

down her back, half-way to the floor.

Older shipmates caution,

Don’t go falling

for her sweet words.

The night-club girls

want a ticket to America.

I should have listened.

Instead, I send a letter

that fractures my engagement

like cracking

a dead branch over my knee.

I had fallen in love.

Of course, as soon as the ship

leaves Subic Bay,

another sailor falls for Faye.

At deployment’s end

the one I hurt meets me on the pier

with words I don’t deserve to hear,

I forgive you, forgive yourself.

We won’t mention this again.

~ Michael Escoubas

Judge Larry Turner wrote, “The language usage in this poem is very good, for example, "onyx hair that shines/ like polished Navy boots" and "fractures my engagement/ like cracking/ a dead branch over my knee." But the primary reason I chose it is the strong story it tells, and tells so well.

Barbara Eaton added, “What I liked about "Sailor at Subic Bay" was that, if your loved one confesses to you, they want to be forgiven.”  

There are two more first place winners.

bereft 

i thought

we were star-crossed lovers 

like romeo and juliet

the world held so many possibilities

for you and i,

but i should've known from that

moment that our love

was doomed to die;

it was a one sided love where i all but

worshiped you as the god you were not

and your 'love' was just lust

fool's gold

but my swooning, starving heart

couldn't tell the difference

at the time—

but it's like i told you once,

"hindsight is twenty-twenty";

and it's not like i can go back in time and

stop myself from falling for a fallen angel pretending

to be some sort of jilted saint so i try 

piece by piece to forget you somehow but i cannot

i am the girl that always remembers

the girl that always loves

& the one that is always left behind.

- linda m. crate 

One thing judge Barbara Eaton liked about “bereft” was that she “found the idea of not ‘bending with the remover to remove’ very Shakespearean.

Agent Orange Angst

Vietnam drives us apart again and finally.

I wail at night alone,

And grieve this guy who morphed into a monster
and forgot to be a man.

War is mean and menacing my marriage unmendable and i wait.

Hospitalized him in March mental health when he hired
a high school hitman
for a hundred bucks it's over.

I'm alive to pen this pain.

The social worker says "Stop saving him.  He's tired."

You mean spent...

enough federal money to compensate him for the battle
he was pinned in for

A Presidential Citation...

He used to be my pal.  A jolly guy who drank a bit too much
and lounged in front of football.

I fed him and laughed at life with him.

We made love and awkwardly we laughed at being best friends first.

I'm just an old piece of gravel he said.

  Not really.

     I loved him. 

        I still do.

But he's really Jekyll and Hyde just hide i did all the time in the end
of this eternal ending.

And I'm done spending hours calling the Attorney General

about this attitude...

Allowing heroes to age fast and abandoning them
in underfunded hospitals.

So i stood my ground finally and agreed.

Let him go.  Get an anonymous apartment.

I'll abandon saving him another time.  I lost count anyway.

Because i love him.

I'll relocate too.  I'm anonymously married now.

And I'll begin grieving this aim he has to drink himself done.

Because i love him.

And avoid assassins.

~ Sondy Sloan

Pamela Larson says, “The more I dissect this poem, the more I like it. "Agent Orange Angst" is the one I would pick and here's why: The form of the poem, with the variation of line length, made me feel the many steps to make progress, only to be denied. The three indented lines toward the middle reinforced the feeling that the love is never going to stop. It keeps pushing forward. The use of I vs. i is interesting; showing a loss of self to the situation at times and to the narrator’s love for this person, no matter what. There is quite a bit of alliteration and I didn’t feel it was overbearing or too forced. I would have liked a more visual picture. However, I think the lack of it helped to show his being treated like just a faceless entity. 

“The narrator certainly goes through a lot of loss and disillusionment in this poem. Love lost due to a break up is one thing but, love lost to a break down, to an outside force, or many, can be even more devastating. Having to leave love to the chance of it destroying itself, I think that is what is expressed so well here.”

NOTE ON "AGENT ORANGE ANGST": Some of the lines in "Agent Orange Angst" were too long for the format of this blog. I'm including the photo below so you can see the full variety of line lengths as they were seen by the judges

NOTE: These poets retain copyright to their own poems.

Bios

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has four published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014),  If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), and My Wings Were Made To Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017). Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015. The second novel of this series Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015. The third of the seven book series Centaurs & Magic was published November 2016. Her novel Corvids & Magic was published March 2017.

Michael Escoubas began writing poetry for publication in August of 2013, after retiring from a 48-year-career in the printing industry. Early in life his mother said, You have a gift for words; you should do something with that gift. He writes poetry, in part, because of his mother’s encouraging words. Michael also writes poetry because he believes poetry brings people together and that poets are menders of broken things. Michael has published one chapbook, Light Comes Softly, which is available as an eBook through Pronoun Publishing.

Sondy Sloan says, “I am a writer to a fault...it's a compulsion.” Sondy’s writing is often narrative. “I like to insert creativity even into non-fiction it's more interesting in my opinion. Less dry. So i scribble mostly in assonance and alliteration and i dance to my pen pushing me. A typewriter is like a drum. And as a dancer i try not to be discordant if not required. I'm retired from a dangerous job. So my tolerance was high.”

© 2017

June Poetry Challenge Winners

Congratulations to Sondy Sloan and Peggy Trojan, winners of the June Poetry Challenge.

Sloan’s poem, “The Red Chair” came with a photo illustration. I like the way the chair and its inhabitant are integrated throughout the poem. It is obvious that the poet (or persona) could not even think of the chair without thinking of her loved one who sits there, “askew” as is the chair. I especially like the first line of the last stanza, and the way the ending shows us the feelings of the poet (or persona) at which she has been hinting throughout.

The Red Chair

Swallowed by its size, you sit barefoot
In your chubby red chair, my gift to you
From Big Daddy’s Bargain Basement.
And like you, the cushions
Are askew, indelibly warped
To shape your life of sitting sidewise;
A habit made more frequent by age and arthritis.

I grieve the original figure of rich velvet hues:
Mahogany, gold and hunter green, misshapen, lumpy.
Its skin worn shiny where you rest your bones
Most. After decades together, you have grown akin. Knots
Knit awry on your knuckles, feet, elbows, knees.

Do you want me to get the cushions reshaped?
No, you respond, spreading your lips wide
With snaggle-tooth grin, hushing my fidgety hands
With yours. I like it this way.
It fits me, eh? And it does.

You are changing form—gnarled
Like a twisted old olive tree.
Bones crackle like kindling in the fireplace,
Muscles like shrunken jerky.
Teeth a little yellow, toenails, too.

I share you with your padded lodestone.
But you are mine, even there, sitting cock-a-hoop,
Budweiser in hand, warning off ancient aches.
I straighten pillows ‘round your dark and musky form.
You touch my face, coo in serene syllables,
Who loves you, sweetie?

And all our years run upriver.
I lean my lips hard into your shifting cheek-skin,
Tasting the salt of your silvered beard, soaking
In the smell of your soul,
Sinking into you, into the tender red chair.

~ Sondy Sloan

The second winning poem will probably resonate with many people. It brings to my mind many family gatherings, celebrating holidays, anniversaries and birthday around a table expanded by adding leaves. The description is good—I can almost see the table. The ending shows me a family, like mine, which gathers newcomers into its warm embrace.

Gathering Place

The table was old
when we bought it
in the seventies.
Queen Anne, mahogany,
paw feet and elegantly carved knees.
It shares the dining room
only with its matching buffet
and chairs.
Seats eight without leaves.
When everyone comes home
we extend it into the living room,
moving the coffee table
and wing chair,
so we can all sit together.
Year after year, it expands,
like love,
to all who come.

~ Peggy Trojan

Poets retain copyright on their poems.

Watch for a new poetry challenge in July. YOU might be the next winner!

Also: I'll be leading a workshop ("The Nature of Poetry and the Poetry of Nature") at the Green Lake Conference Center in Wisconsin, August 19-24. You can obtain more information about the conference at http://glcc.org/Files/Conferences/2012%20Writers%20complete.pdf. I would love to see you there!

© 2012 Wilda Morris

March Challenge Winner

The challenge for this month was to write a poem somehow inspired by a photograph I took in Mexico. The photo took the winning poet's imagination to the farmer's market in Lawrence,Kansas.

Congratulations to Sondy Sloan.

Farmers’ Market

No matter how tight the month,
I snap my clutch closed
around 40 bucks, squirreled away for Saturdays:
March till November;
sun or spit.

At dawn, I board the empty bus
to the center of my small city,
two totes rolled up under my arm.
I covet the 6 am sunrise as if it
were my own wee weekend hour.

Hopping off at New Hampshire
I mosey over to Massachusetts Street.
Two blocks-o-parking-lots
feature Flora and Fauna:

chicks and chorizo;
carrots and catfish;
begonias and buffalo;
emu and eggs.

Pigeons and peppers;
tomatoes and tulips;
potatoes and pumpkins;
feta and figs.

Stalling at Saturday morning stands—
eyes widen, nose inhales the newest crops;
I feel the fresh of Farmer’s Market…
I taste the week awaken,
on Saturday morn.

~ Sondy Sloan

Copyright to this poem remains with the author.

Did this poem awaken your hunger for some of the foods mentioned, or hungry for the sights provided by a farmer's market?

The next challenge will be posted on April 1, the first day of National Poetry Month. It might be your month to be the winner!

© 2012 Wilda Morris