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Annualpoetrycontest

DAYTONMETROLIBRARY

Poetry PartyAwards Ceremony

Sunday, November 5, 2017Main Library Eichelberger Forum

THANK YOU to Mock Turtle Zine editorial staff for giving thoughtful consideration to all the entries in the Dayton Metro Library’s 2017 Poetry Contest:

Matt Birdsall Fred Kirchner TJ McGuire

Mock Turtle Zine is an independent, nonprofit collaborative that promotes Dayton area writers and artists in a print publication and online. First place winners in each age category will be published in the Fall, 2017 issue. Visit MockTurtleZine.com.

THANK YOU to the Friends of the Dayton Metro Library for your continued, generous support of the annual Poetry Contest. Visit DaytonMetroLibrary.org/Friends.

CONGRATULATIONS to all the finalists whose work appears in this booklet.

2017

Winnersof the

Dayton Metro

Library

poetry contest

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teenFirst Place Sophia Huling .........................................................8

Second Place Keress Weidner ...............................................9

Third Place Bailey Atkinson ..................................................10

Honorable Mention Elizabeth Cordonnier .........................11

Honorable Mention Elizabeth C. Hinkle ..............................12

adultFirst Place William T. Stolz ......................................................13

Second Place Kaitlyn Spina ..................................................14

Third Place Wendy Dereix .....................................................15

Honorable Mention Isaac Knapp ........................................16

Honorable Mention Kurt Lammi ...........................................17

seniorFirst Place David Lee Garrison ...............................................18

Second Place James Brooks .................................................19

Third Place Barbara Astor .......................................................20

Honorable Mentions Kay Berg .............................................. 21

Honorable Mention Betsy M. Hughes ...................................22

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Old Sentiments and Sediment from Lillian Prunty and My Dog

The dog runs,All along my spine,I hear Lillian’s name,I lay my lips against hatred like a wall,The silver in her tongue is spinning,And stringing streams of blood spiral in splats around the world

I play with my fingers and toes and tie them to my shoestrings,Jethro and I are both human until he barks and I shriek and yell and hit him and we both become dogs, or maybe it’s the other way around,The silver in my tongue thrashes and breaks off the points of every tooth,I am helpless and ugly again, and my spine shakes me off of it,But my hatred is as blessed as my love,Do you deserve either, Lillian?

Lillian said, Lillian saysMy hair is strung with lice, it’s why it looks so bad,My hatred slept through pubescence, and I smiled compulsively and didn’t blame her for hermeanness, it existed as a person would have,Now we all scrape our knees and trade blood, and howl like dogs and hide in televisions from the adults,I feel her voice and it lives in the spine of every book I write,Silence is golden, duct tape is silver she said, she says

The forks and spoons and knives are pretty and silverSlipping through Lillian’s mouth guided by a pale hand like a white butterfly slipping its shining proboscis in and out of the face of a flower,Her spine was like champagne pouring from a fluteShe throws her strings down in webs like religion,Men and animals tie their ankles and wrists to the slippery loose strings to be drawn up to salvation,There is hatred in the sky as there is on earth

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Lighting the Pyre

When coming to terms with the passing of ageThere are certain things to be spoken for:

It’s been another orbit around the sunAnd it’s spring again--We should be happy,But we’ll keep pining for the fall,And all its barren branches:

And it’s not another yearUntil we can host a wake for the old one,Light the funeral pyre and have a crisis-- We don’t eat cake for birthdays, but ifYou and I spent the day baking one then maybe it’s okTo make an exception,To burn it down the river too,Let the wish be that it floats on swift water.

When we’re a pair,We can put away our haughty sadnessesAnd ignore them amidst company.When you leave,I remember this, and I remember that I didn’t choose My family, that my family Doesn’t live in my house.So we ignore the birthday.

Ignore the old name. We wait for a day when we can make exceptions yet again,And age comes in chronicles, not orbits around the sun.

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Transparent Cage

She sprints through realities, Busting stone barriers, To twirl in front of the mirrors, Dripping with crystaled fantasies, That her life so depends on. Her language is complex; Laced with theories, stories, and ideas that wove a tight rope of curiosity. She only wishes to find someone fluent in the same tongue. Meaningless days are filled with tea and muted, idle chatter, Leaving her alone with her pen and paper. She fills her pages with words that blossom into pink peonies, penciled bluebells spilling from the margins. She places one hand on the glass frame, Melancholy over her loneliness. So that night she finally folded her words into a crane, watching it fly away, Carried by a silver hope. The next day, When night fell, She stood with her palm still pressed to the transparent wall, swimming alone in her crimson thoughts. Until, A palm rested against hers, Opposite their transparent cage. A paper crane then fluttered next to her, Glimmering in their golden refuge.

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High School Lessons

I can count the hours of sleep I gotlast night on one hand,each finger a milestone, a trophyto hang on a shelf; I collect them throughout the weekuntil I have a complete set of ten.

The night before every math test,I stuff equation after equation intomy already-clogged-up brain,and I guess it works becauseI usually get an A, butthe next day, when the teacher passes the tests back,I find myself staring at a message written in a languageI can no longer speak.

Every day at lunch, I scarf my food downso quickly I forget what I ate by the timemy body starts digesting it, but it’s fine because what’s importantis that with food out of the way,I can spend the remaining twenty minutes of lunch finishingthe chapter I was supposed to read for English last nightbut didn’t because I fell asleep.I’m so busy trying to concentrate that I don’t even hearmy best friend asking me what’s wrong.

I spend every spare second or two I can findon a math problem or a paragraph or vocabularyin the hopes that maybe I’ll have some extratime tonight to eat dinner with my family, or exercise for a few minutes, or start the book that’s been collecting dust on my nightstand,but all my efforts are in vain becauseI still have six hours of homework left.

I finally allow myself to crawl into bed at half past two am (give or take a few hours),falling asleep to the steady cadence of the lies I tell myselfevery night like a lullaby: “You’ll get more sleep tomorrow,”or “Tomorrow will be a better day,” even though I’ve taught myself otherwise. TE

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To: Snowy Mitten

Okay: I’m sorryI didn’t finish you.

And I know your fingersAre too long, and thatyou’re too tall, But at

least you didn’t get dirtyin that bin, or that bag,and I know I promised

I’d make your friend, butI was out of yarn, and

lost my crochet hooks. AlsoI got sick, so please

don’t get mad. I’ll stillmake them, I just need to finish

this poem, and my school, and thatbook, and my animation, and the

cookies, and the soup first. Sodon’t be mad, when I say

not yet. I’m going to get thatother one soon, but just

don’t expect me to finish itin the summer! I won’t

need you then. I guess I’lljust do it tomorrow. Once

I finish this sandwich, that is.

--from Me

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Newspaper Delivery

The green glow of the interioris filled with the smell of cigarettes and the damp, freshly printednewspapers rolled, bandedand piled high in the backseat. Clad in a faded armyjacket and rubber gloves,my father, in a quick fluidmotion, tosses a paper out the open window where it lands in the darkness with a muffled thud. It is these Fridaynights, bundled in longunderwear and blankets, I look forward to, a few hours alone with a man I want to know.

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Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, 1896

These hands vaguely pulsewith life-red color: one fleshin the center of his vision,a clasped plea for life, or at leastfor the living to not have to endure this. When we die it is the worldthat dies from us, he writes.It took so long to paint her young death—he was bound in cyclesof scratch away, repaint, repeat. We are bound to feel the painthat does not come from the dying girl; she is too far away, distanced by that bed and the glasson the table. The pain comes from somewhere too near for comfort, canvas edge blurredblack like wet eyelashes. Focus—those hands, that mark of life; capture it.

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Leonard Cohen’s Thanksgiving Feast

Memories fall from the breast,A slow slicingLike a thousand cuts—

Lingchi from the carving knife,

A remembrance of humble offerings,Coming together,For memories sake.

Learn that a cruel memoryWill decayAnd decomposeOn the heap,Like the carcassFrom our feast.

Let us break bread anew,Rejoice in the harvestOf a new season,Revel in theConversation Of a new day,

While we sing in private Our tortured hallelujahs.

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We Wrote These Stories on Our FacesAfter Robert C. Koepnick’s “Untitled”

Those with no faces must cut theirs out of books.A pastiche of color photographs and wordsthat get the right feelingacross; soulful, sentimental,empty.

These books are blanktheir pages are stonesof the road, and so tooour faces are flint and granite.

Stare where our eyes should beNow at where they are; on the pages.

Empty faces speak stories of the roada troubled limp, wheelswith iron spokes fountaining to rust. The roadgoes up and throughus all; we walk through the words of our sisters, on thefaces of our fathers.

Behind me aserpentine oracle foretells footsteps across the hazy black sea,an inkwell flooding a page just begun.

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Distraction

He’s a strange little manwho knows my nameand targets his advertisementsfrom my previous buys,so I buy into himand he makes his saleonly then for me to realizeas beforethat he hasn’t sold me anythingbut stolenmy timelocked away in his briefcaseas he goes on to another clientleaving his card behindknowing I’ll call him again

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Langston Hughes

His slender poemsdrip down the pagelike teardrops,

jounce along in sync with the bounceat the back of the bus.

They sting and achelike fingernailstorn to the nub,

yet they hold handsand rock porch swings;they know what joy is.

They cry out like graffiti,climb dark staircases

littered with tacks,splinters, shards of glass, and dreams.

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Still Life

The artist in all of us longs to preserve momentary permanence. Living color, we like to say,in the gleam of a polished apple, a cut rose at its apex,the hare freshly shot, hanging by its not-so-lucky foot,staring at the partridge which in turn eyes delectable grapes.Who held the quill that rests on the unfinished letterunder the glow of that dripping candle? Which lover or dying mother will never receive it?Each viewer will complete the story implied in pigment that dries to an imageat once particular and universal.We walk through the portal of a two-dimensionalpainting to touch the upper half of a skull on a tablethat was once inside a grinning facebemused by possibilities we are left to ponder.

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Night Out

- for Koo

You unlocked the front dooras we tiptoed inside yourmother’s house trying notto wake her, each holding a bagfilled with a dozen Jung’s donuts.

Chilled to the boneafter cruising ‘round in yourred Plymouth Fury, you’d plunkyourself down on a nearby registerand I’d plant myself on another,heat wafting out each cast iron grill,our buns and donuts simultaneouslywarmed. Hands reaching into sacks,the last indulgence disappearingas we’d wipe chocolate frostingfrom our mouths, taste buds satiated,appetites appeased until the next timewe’d head down Wayne Avenuedisillusioned with the bars, in need oflate night comfort food in the coldand that first bite into sweetness,that rise of a taut cake ring behind it,the fusion sending us heaven-boundand wanting for more.

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Chance Encounter at the Hospital

We sit in adjoining roomsAt bedsides not our own,Your father’s calloused handsRest folded on the blanket,My sister’s braided hairLies smooth along the pillow.

Fears ebb and swellLike waves on a pastel shore,Monitors beep a counterpointTo the rhythm of our heartsAnd the rise and fall of white linen.The air has no familiar scent.

Humbled by our vigilsWe meet in passing,Formal at first, untilMemory parts the curtain,And as you turn to goI touch your sleeve as if to say,

Dance with me here in the hallway,Let me study the tweed of your jacket,Be lost in brown fields of weaveUntil I can smell earth again,The wet wool of dogs,And the spice of your aftershave.

Dance me out the windowAnd away to drier ground,To sunlight and green treesUntil our ears are filled with musicAnd our lives lie before us,As if this were again the high school prom.

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Under the Shadow of the Moon

I.

One August afternoon, raccoons appeared.I saw them under bushes, furtive, slink,conduct their masked nocturnal prowling – weird behavior. Time was truly out of sync.The birds were settling down as if for night,their early roosting unexpected, strange;to them descending dusk and dimming lightseemed subtle cue to make a vocal change.My dog, disoriented, gave a barkof protest. Suddenly the air felt cool.My body weight was lighter in this darkwhile gravity let go a little pull.There was a difference on this earthly sphere;I sensed it while I waited, watching here.

II.

The sun slid slowly underneath the moon – a crescent, slender sliver, aureole.I knew that it would reappear quite soon,its brilliant ball completely round and whole.My fascinated joy at the eclipseis all about control: how long it lasts,how long the darkness holds me in its grips,is certain science in the weathercasts.But most of life’s dark shadows do not warn.Instead they pounce, persist. The sun will burn,the earth will turn, but lunar orbits bornewithout alignment must compel concern.With temporary darkness we can cope,we shadowed creatures confidently hope.

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