2003 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize First Place
If I Called You River by Alison Townsend
If I called you river and straddled
the silky muscles of your passing.
If you called me river and pulled me to you, swimming
in the silky, silver pull of my legs.
If I wove myself around you, sweet
and sinuous as water itself, as the call
of the redwing floating toward you now from the cattails.
If you slid beside me, sleek and playful
as the otter careening down his muddy ride
in one long breath before he caresses the water.
If I caressed you back, reflecting sunlight,
reflecting wingspan of hovering red-tailed hawk
reflecting the tenderness with which light
is received always by water.
If you were water entering water.
If we flowed that way for a long time,
distinct but inseparable, the glinting
flecks of silica from your sediments mixing
with the sun-sparked mica of mine.
If the spring rains came, pushing us hard and fast,
from our home in the mountains.
If I had known high water and times of flood,
the edge of me lapping, leaving a birth-scar
along a line of rain-drenched trees.
If you had known those times too,
your calm surface churned into a wall
of water pulled, root to stem, stem to leaf,
leaf to air where it balances for a moment,
quivers, and falling, begins again.
If I was a river you had never seen
but had dreamed of forever.
If you were a river I could taste in my sleep.
If even in winter we kept moving together,
meeting in secret beneath our glassy quilt.
If everything is season and snowmelt.
If everything is release and return, (no stanza break)
the peppered foam of frog spawn
and the salmon’s muscular
silver thrust.
If I called you river.
If you called me river.
If the river knew anything more
than this sweet braiding and undoing of water,
that feeds everything
and yearns for everything and is,
in its rushing, everything the river can know.
If the river knew.
If river were ever possible to contain.
If the heart were, and the blood, and the body,
this human urge to name things
by things other than what they are.
I name you river.
I name myself river.
I name what we are together river
carving a channel between the grassy banks,
leading us
to the open mouth,
the salty swallow,
the deep, green voice of the sea
that cries out so far within us
I cannot tell if it is you who cries out or me.
Alison Townsend
Alison Townsend is the author of the chapbook, What the Body Knows (Parallel Press, 2002) and the poetry book, The Blue Dress (White Pine, 2003). She teaches English, creative writing, and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and at her women’s writing workshop, In Our Own Voices.
2003 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize Finalist
On Guard, In Moonlight by Mary Makofske
The full moon rises through a net of trees
just beginning to bud, both leaves and flowers
knotted black against varying shades of dark.
A man shifts the weight of his rifle,
knowing the ghost light makes any motion
in the woods more visible, as it makes
him more visible, on guard at the edge
of his sleeping comrades. Perhaps he does
not think any more about it, has no
memories strung to the white stone that rolls
through the sky. Perhaps it becomes the face
of a girl, bruised by his fist, or by his loss
to war. It’s a dead rock, space garbage
caught by accident in our orbit, he does not
even know the myths it trails, but the sea
leans toward its blank eye, and his eye
wanders to that hole like the entryway
of a bullet, because there is nothing
else to see in the darkness, no one to shoot.
2003 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize Finalist
Inquisition by Shia Shabazz Barnett
1.
What are they doing?
My daughter, a demi Me
veiled in the midnight of her father’s skin
the quiet seriousness of his eyes
has questioned the world since
her evulsion from the womb.
Today, she gawks at a couple
thrice her age and height
lips lapping lips
heads gyrating
tongues tossing
from mouth to mouth.
The lovers whittle themselves into a bench
like loud graffiti
oblivious to my daughter
oblivious to the court of food around them
abuzz in neon
aromas that tempt the starving
as they pass dazed
like carousel figures.
The lovers devour each other over cold pizza crust and
sweating cups of super-sized soda.
It’s not polite to stare. Sweetie.
II.
They’re kissing, she finally utters.
I want to shield her from hot and heavy
while she’s still lukewarm and light
drop an ice cube in the tall glass of heat
she gulps in their spectacle.
I push forward the steaming bowl of rice
she’d pleaded for moments before
I want to lightly season her meal with mild
salt and pepper dashes
spoon feed her digestible
mother-to-daughter morsels
of honeyed birds and bees
But the couple, thrice her age and height
(no stanza break)
lips lapping lips
heads gyrating
tongues tossing
from mouth to mouth
don’t let me.
My daughter becomes marionette
her gaze, the strings
reflexive mimic of their movement.
Her eyes blink heavy, lethargic with copycat lust
her moistening mouth opens and closes
her head tilts, turns in soft, broken rhythms.
I know. Now eat.
III.
Do you ever kiss daddy like that?
Yes, I want to tell her.
We used to kiss like that all the time.
I want to tell her we kissed.
When my daddy wasn’t looking
When it rained
After a fight
Before we made love
When we heard good news
When we heard bad news
When slow songs came on
When fast songs ended
In cars
At movies
But never too much in public
Before you
After your brother
While you were asleep
And your dreams kept your eyes from noticing.
Before bills, the economy and war.
I want to tell her yes
but I don’t know how.
I was never taught
to be honest about loving.
I look at the couple
lips lapping lips
heads gyrating
tongues tossing
from mouth to mouth
love making love
and answer
Yes, I have.