CHAPARRAL POETRY FORUM 2016 WINNING POEMS
CHAPARRAL POETRY FORUM CHOLLA DIVISION
Cholla Division First Prize Maurine E. Haltiner, Salt Lake City, Utah
There Are Some
I have never forgotten. David was predator, all
muscle and quiet rage. From Take Down to Cradle,
hand-holds secure as anchored talons, his moves
lightly wing-loaded—Arm Bar, Headlock,
Breakdown—he never settled for less than a Pin.
I welcomed this golden boy. I took him to task
for rash laughter and outbursts in class. He took
hall timeouts in a squat, saying they toned
leg muscles. He seldom capitulated from a notion,
knew what he knew as surely as an eagle, lazy
in the air, spots a mouse and takes a dive. He said
Tess of the d’Urbervilles asked for what she got.
A defensive Bridge foils a Fall was his way
of putting it. Years later he returned for a visit. I asked
how he’d put it for Vietnam. He never answered
in more than uncertain terms, hedged
on the edges of the mat—Gut Wrench, MP, not
so bad. It was late in the day. I was tired.
There was his dog-tagged page in Oedipus, our brief
visit with the Sphinx. He eased away. I didn’t see
the future any more than he, any more
than the Sphinx who dumps casualties after each
rollout of her tangled words. His obituary
detailed a short acting career. Reviews of his last
performance said he howled like Olivier reborn, raked
his eyes with golden pins, reeked of every scent
of blindness—a technical fall, he’d have called
it. Weeks later he stepped off a chair
Cholla Division Second Prize Cynthia Lukas, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Snakeskin in Winter
You have been gone now for months
But your skin remains in its full length intact
Diamond facets shining in the winter sun
Just off the footpath into the wilderness
Every day we see it as we pass
Grasping onto the faith it must have taken
For you to shed your entire encasement
Then move on without a glance backward
There is beauty in such abandonment
An intricate, diamond-cut, timeless beauty
In knowing what to let go when moving on to your next life
In knowing deep inside when it is time to go
Cholla Division Third Prize Lynda La Rocca, Twin Lakes, Colorado
How I Know
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. - Sylvia Plath
How can it still be winter
when I’m melting to
a soup of cells,
a flick of eyelash, bits of bone,
one soggy slice of fingernail,
the stink of scorching fat,
a metal pot is jumping, rattling on the stove.
Outside the window is
a bear,
I smell its matted fur,
rust-stained and wet,
it glistens, grunts, and snorts,
black snout,
its nostrils flaring.
Great claws are shredding, gouging shutters,
ripping, tearing off the wood—
yet these shape-shifters do not rise
when all the ground is spread
with crusted snow—
and this is how I know
the earth has turned,
the soft, round, secret bulbs
are pulsing, pushing, petaling
in bursts
of yellow, scarlet, purple.
Look now—
the cups are opening like mouths.
CHAPARRAL POETRY FORUM CHAQUETA DIVISION
Chaqueta Division First Prize Philip Levin, Biloxi, Mississippi
Rain Wouldn’t Come
Corn stalks shriveled like farmers’ faces
Ground parched and brown created jagged cracks
Tumbleweeds rolled across dust-covered sands
Barrel stave cows shivered in hunger
Their dull eyes over jaws too dry to voice
Wells yielded buckets of angry black mud
Trees dropped hairdos, prematurely browned
Paint-peeled barns shuddered in despair
Vultures alone found dinner aplenty
Pirate bands picking at the fallen, leaving
Bleached cattle skulls with staring black holes
Ranchers draped over broken fences
Lips of blistered burlap seed bags
Drooped eyebrows, providing scant shade
Over cataract-eyed forlorn gazes
Staring resentfully at relentless sky
Exhausted windmills turned uselessly in rare
taunting winds
Until one night
The weathervane creaks, a shift in the winds
Stars snuff behind banks of dark promise
Indian ghosts pound thunder on the tom toms
Night skies brighten in electrical jags
Rat-a-tat-tat across the tin roofs
The rooster announces the glory of relief
Clouds roll away revealing golden dawn
A miraculous green flushes fields
Clover, flowers, gullies awash with sparkling
renewal
Life returns
Chaqueta Division Second Place Karma K. Wasden, St. George, Utah
Cherry Creek, Nevada
Abandoned red brick house,
doors and windows gone,
town show-place in late 1880’s.
Gray, swaybacked lumber houses,
empty log cabins, huts, bare rock foundations
stone walls of uncovered basements,
once lodged eight thousand souls,
now mostly heaps of debris.
Tumbleweeds huddled in sheltered spots.
Half-fallen building sports fading sign—
Saloon—last of twenty-eight.
Train tracks covered by sage brush.
Remnants of crumpled rail-line water tank
sinking slowly to the ground.
Tucked in foothills of windswept, hundred-mile valley.
On northeast corner of intersection labeled
Cherry Creek and Main,
atop two weathered pine shelves,
forty-three mailboxes perch precariously,
grayed white, rusty tin, muddled red,
doors missing or hanging down
like tongues of panting dogs,
sway haphazardly in the wind.
Ghosted letters spell out names
of long forgotten miners—
Beal, Steptoe, Craven, Tallkitten, Myers—
hungry for news as well as wealth.
Chaqueta Division Third Place Maurine E. Haltiner, Salt Lake City, Utah
Shades of Kokopelli
I stumble beside you near goldenrod
and Indian paintbrush. Swaying on a wedge
of limestone, the shadow
of one green stem—gently leafed, delicately
flowered—mimics legs, hump, flute,
headdress, spirited sex. This moment
I am Anasazi, lacking
only charcoal from last night’s fire
to celebrate you in bragging
outline. I step closer, merge our silhouettes
in mutual eclipse. Anna’s hummingbirds
and northern flickers dip and dart
to the rhythms of your flute, its fanciful
notes echoing across
slot canyons, clicking through boughs
of pinon and ponderosa. I carry you home
curled in my hand. In brash moonshine
you become black Stork
of the Hopi. I welcome your hump-bag
of unborn spirits, our night
meetings agreeably
brief. You disappear
when naked boughs
of mountain mahogany, leaves
winter-stripped, whip
shadows over sterile
snow. March sunshine swells
desert willows. Twig legs reappear
followed by budding flute, leafy humpback,
head feathered with catkins.
A breeze rouses
easy branches. Plumes waving,
you jig
into the overworld
of colossal shadows on red sandstone, trump
Plato’s forms, fruitless
in their cold cave.
CHAPARRAL POETRY FORUM CHAPAREJOS DIVISION
Chaparejos Division First Prize Kathleen Mc Clung, San Francisco, California
The Year We Memorize Planets
I watch the sisters climb three steps and go
inside Rosellen’s house. When they see me
they beam and wave. I wonder what they know
about the girl who studies them. Dad murmurs, “Low
IQ.” We rake more brittle leaves. “Be neighborly.
Don’t stare.” The sisters climb three steps. They go
to special ed., east Sacramento.
A small bus honks and idles every day, empty.
They beam and wave. I wonder what they know
about tonsils, Neptune, or polio,
quicksand or mushroom clouds, infinity.
I watch the sisters climb three steps. Perhaps they go
into a pink bedroom like mine, lift a window
and listen to the rain, to sirens, black phoebes.
The sisters beam and wave. I wonder what they know
and what they say at night when sleep is slow
to come, when branch on glass clinks mystery.
I watch Rosellen’s daughters climb three steps and go.
They beam and wave. I wonder what they know.
Chaparejos Division Second Prize Barbara Blanks, Garland, Texas
Here Be Dragonflies
Perhaps I may not often speak
of my obsession for unique
creative modes of dragonflies
in any art that glorifies
their shapes, for they epitomize
the athlete’s trim and fit physique.
A dynamo in air, as sleek
as cat and just as agile, flies
with acrobatic skill—defies
the laws of gravity, relies
on long and narrow winged-technique
to hover, flit, fly backward, streak
across a pond to catch a prize—
mosquitoes, wasps, and other flies—
voracious feeders for their size.
As earrings, paintings, and batik,
art captures dragonfly mystique.
Chaparejos Division Third Prize Linda R. Payne, Defiance, Ohio
Grand Canyon Suite
Relentlessly the river flows,
a chisel in the Sculptor’s hand,
it toils and labors to expose
a masterpiece from hardened land.
A chisel in the Sculptor’s hand
reveals a panoramic view,
a masterpiece from hardened land.
The Sculptor works to smooth and hew,
reveals a panoramic view
the process of millennia.
The Sculptor works to smooth and hew
a stunning rock-walled atria
the process of millennia.
The river forms this cavity,
a stunning rock-walled atria,
vast layers of antiquity.
The river forms this cavity;
it toils and labors to expose
vast layers of antiquity.
Relentlessly the river flows.
CHAPARRAL POETRY FORUM CHIMERA DIVISION
Chimera Division First Prize Kolette Montague, Centerville, Utah
Last Man Standing
(in parts)
Plagues, pestilence, global warming, carbon
footprints,
devastation, annihilation, extinction.
I survived the cold war
with occasional knocks on the head
scooting under my school desk.
I must have lived through
the sixties, I’m here now.
But lately I’ve been worrying
about zombies.
Garlic against vampires.
Snapping fingers against elephants.
I’m not sure winking keeps zombies at bay.
If zombies didn’t exist
we’d have to invent them.
And let’s face it, some zombies aren’t
worth the trouble it takes to dig them up.
Is it ghoulish to hope the zombies lurch
to my neighbor’s house before mine?
If one stumbles close enough
do I give him a hand?
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Nobody.
Nobody who?
Nobody to speak of.
Chimera Division Second Place Shane D. Williams, Washington, Utah
Show Your Work
I counted to eleventeen,
divided that by y,
multiplied by forty-twelve,
and had a piece of pi.
I climbed up a geometree,
applied a cute subfraction,
minimized a polly-gone
with angular protraction.
I calculated clockwise in
an algorythmic section,
denominated digits with
math’matical perfection.
I summed up some sum differences,
then solved the quadric core . . .
And that is how I figured out
that two plus two is four.
Chimera Division Third Place Beth Staas, La Grange Park, Illinois
Doodling
Enough about flowers and sun
or the robins that sing tra-la.
Let’s hear it instead for pickles,
the ones that reek with garlic
to make the Reuben come out just right.
And I’m all for prunes or purple plums
that also make things come out right.
There are other rights like the Constitution
along with the Bill of Rights,
enough reason to celebrate the afterthought
and the Bible with its ever-after.
Then there’s left—both left-behind
and those who live in a right-handed world.
Think of left-overs like globs in the fridge
as well as left-brain that sums such matters
with digital perfection.
Arch supports deserve a big hand,
(I mean the kind that last)
and there’s something special
about the arch remark, the sweep of the brow
and the sweeping statements that make no sense
even though there are five to choose from.
Whatever counts is worth the measure
and uppermost in the passage of time
like the bong sounding from Big Ben
or the dinner bell and Home on the Range
depending on whether it’s too hot
(that is, weather or range).
But most important is the springy curl
at the nape of your neck
and the spring in your step when confronted
with surprises that spring full-blown,
filled with tooting whistles, paper hats, plastic
forks
bringing us around to the beginning
if ever there was one.
