MEMBERS’ CHOICE SPRING 2021
1st place Due Date Alexandra Crivici-Kramer 2nd place Shadows Inga M. Potter 3rd place Reparations Cindy Ellen Hill 4th place Come Spring Marta Rijn Finch 5th place Between the Stars And Me Sarah Dickenson Snyder
These poems will be published in the 2022 Mountain Troubadour, and will appear here later this year.
MEMBERS’ CHOICE SPRING 2020
IN MY SON’S EYES
I know the smell of oak and pine,
Of wood smoke mist and dandelion,
Of summer sweat and autumn air;
This is the scent of my son’s hair.
About his head of marigold
Are maize and corn silk gently rolled
With nacre shine of northern lights,
Comet tails and cirrus whites.
I know the depth of evening blue
That sparkles from my boy of two,
Who sobers me at forty-one
That I might not have had a son.
My heart expands with father’s pride,
The universe is simplified—
When all the stars in all the skies
Are but a speck in my son’s eyes.
David Stauffer, First Place
BIG ROCK
We dreaded the corner room
in the brick schoolhouse,
windowed if we stood—which
we couldn’t—pinned to wooden desks,
pencils suspended in half cylinders
of carved oak
until she told us to fill in mimeos.
Each day a test. Her desk in the back,
unnerving us
facing the chalkboard wall.
Behind me sat Kippy,
she called stupid whenever he gave
the wrong answer, though he tried
when she stomped down the row,
slapped his desk, as if
intelligence was a whack away
in 7th grade.
Shy kids stayed home Mondays,
stomach-ached, missing Mrs. Drebelbus
who got us out of the room
for sit-ups, rope climbing,
didn’t notice I hung at the top
as long as Kippy held the rope.
He held it long
because he hadn’t gotten in trouble
the day we had state capitals
when I slid my paper
so he could see.
I loved capitals. I knew them, I was sure of it.
I wrote in large letters:
Augusta, Lincoln…
and the one fact I remember
from grade seven,
that Big Rock
is not the capital of Arkansas.
Judith Janoo, Second Place
WINNOWING
A fat black nose, followed by my hound,
snuffles through a color guard of windrows.
Perfumed with late cold rain, wormless dirt,
early autumn dark, the piles of leaves seem
like daily journals, crumpled and cast aside
by pin oaks and sweet gum– discarded work:
all those poems that were lacking any point.
The trees pose naked in un-consciousness.
Their roots bind them tight to hard ground,
barkened arms are pulled up by cutting wind;
crucified between here and there they hold
heaven and earth balanced in place. Words
fall beneath their crowns like winter-broken
limbs but their rough skin sings in my hands.
P. H. Coleman, Third Place Tie
A MEDIEVAL SONG OF SOUTHERN FRANCE
If I could take you anywhere
I would fly with you
upon the wings of the snow-white swan
back to the gardens of the Princes
of Perouges.
There you would sit in the Garden of Love.
There the sun would shine down upon you
And the Prince himself would gaze at you
and listen to your song
and smile.
And there within those ancient courtyard walls
you would breathe the air
of frankincense and myrrh, spices and herbs, roses and lilacs;
And all good things of earth
would come true for you, my Love,
And it would be as you have always wanted it to be
for all the days of the earth.
That is what I would wish for you, my Love –
That is what I would wish…
Dan Close, Third Place Tie
FOUND POETRY
had I not crossed
the room at just
that moment
had I not glanced
out the front window
and slightly to the left
I would not have seen
the poem
in the crabapple tree ¾
its branches flush
with robins, barn red
against unexpected spring snow
then gone, swelling the sky
with meter and rhyme
all their own.
Brooke Herter James, Fourth Place
