Winner almost selected, one judge to go. Announcement this weekend 🙂

I’d like to thank all the contributors of poems for what has been an astoundingly fun project for me. Reading over 125 poems has been enlightening and inspiring. I regret that I ran out of time to post more selected highlights on the blog, but there are definitely poems in the running that have not been reposted. Real life has been insanely busy this month.

At this time I am collecting all the poems into a single document, which I will then distribute to a panel of 6 judges (myself, an English teacher, a medical school dean, an engineer, an artist, and a comparative literature guru). Each judge will give 3 points to their favorite, 2 points to a runner up, and 1 point to an honorable mention. The winning poem will have received the most points. In the event of a tie I will ask you the readers to break it.

Thank you for reading and contributing, and perhaps next year I will work out the kinks to allow everyone’s poem to be displayed.

The first annual Charles Prize for Poetry awaits!

Fireflies
~a medical resident

Hand clasps hand
on the window sill,
he in a paper-thin gown,
she in her Sunday dress.

Snow falls.
He craves the sting of crystals
on his tongue,
a shovel to carve a meandering path
to the front door.

And she –
a spark from dying embers
that once flushed his cheeks,
now sunken and pale.

Lilacs blossom.
He dug the earth for their resting place,
pruned them religiously,
watered their roots.

She filled glasses with branches
pouring over the rim –
a breath of lavender anticipation.

Heat rises.
He remembers capturing fireflies in jars
with punctured holes to breathe
and watching them through the night
as their lights flickered
then faded away.

She remembers
laughing at the red juice stains
from freshly picked raspberries
on their chins.

Leaves fall.
The crisp sun is distant
from the blurred shadows of the hospital bed.
The hurried migration of the birds
is silenced by the glass.

From the window,
they imagine the rush of delicate wings
headed south
and the imminent scent of autumn –

Burnt orange peels, smoky maple,
roasting pumpkin seeds.
Their lights flicker,
then fade away.

Thirteen Ways of Seeing
~Aidel Moodnick

I

[Streptococcus pyogenes]

Under the microscope
gram positive cocci in chains
like purple add-a-beads.

In the hospital bed
the modesty of human flesh is
abandoned
except for occasional little islands of skin,
soon to be the freshest wounds.

Without skin the patient is
hairless and bumpy and bloody and raw and
extremely vulnerable to infection.

There is no inside and outside,
only body without flesh.

II

Husband! Lend me your eyes
so that I might see what you see
and since seeing is an act of cognition,
you might as well throw in your brain.
Perhaps I will slip on your values as well,
to have a truer sense of your aesthetic.

But you can keep your emotions,
for I know them already, and frankly
your repertoire is limited.

III

I am not wearing my glasses
again
because I prefer the mish-mash
blur of colors
to the delineated definitions
and repetitive patterns
that are so sharp so stimulating
and sting my eyes to tears.

IV

A woman with a gold monocle
sits alone among her books
and takes pickled herring with her tea.

V

The crack across my mirror
presents a dilemma
over or under,
or hiding in between?

VI

Generations of girls have used a mirror
becoming cartographers of the landscapes
of their bodies.

Now there are textbooks with anatomically correct terms.
labeled drawings:
vagina, labia majora, labia minora, clitoris.

But my little girl will always have
a door that locks
and a mirror

and perhaps one day she will ask her lover
“Darling, shall I draw you a map?”

VII

Everybody knows what atoms look like
despite the fact that perhaps only
the severely autistic
can actually see them.

VIII

Little pink sleep goblins dart around my peripheral vision,
and I hear her call my name from very far away
with the inflection of a question.

IX

I live at the very bottom of the sea
and peek out with a periscope.
The constant rise and fall of the waves
the frequent toss, change of direction
just watching makes me seasick.
So I descend the ladder of the observation post
and burrow deeply in the lovely mud.

X

Through the window I see
a quiet playground
no children, only
one toy dump truck
on it’s side in the sand

XI

The doctor says: There is this
something something
that has somethinged
in your husband’s brain. OK?
Let me know if there’s anything I can do.

The nurse translates: your husband’s brain
is full of blood,
big as a grapefruit,
the skull is hard
and will not break or stretch or swell,
and his brain has squished down
through the hole in the back of the neck,
where his spinal cord should be.
He will die.
We cannot fix this, but
do you happen to know if he wanted
to donate his organs?

Please know that he did not suffer,
that there is nothing you could have done.

Is there anybody you would like me to call?

XII

Through my telescope in the corner apartment
on the forth floor
a beautiful woman who lives with her cat,
sits, reads and drinks tea.
I watch
because she is
as lovely as any woman
that I have ever seen.

XIII

The Voyager spacecraft photographed the Earth
from a distance
of six billion kilometers, a Pale Blue Dot.
In context, it turns out
that the sum of all we know
is no greater
than a spec of dust
floating along a sunbeam.

A unique poem “written” by blacking out a newspaper obituary, done in such a way as to reveal something meaningful about the deceased hidden between the lines:

In Memory
~Rachel S.

She knows
Alzheimer’s disease
always demands
heart
time
and energy
and care to families as well.
With great difficulty
and great risk
it affects her memory,
unwelcome
in her end.

(click to enlarge)

Ending up in Hospital Room 403B
~anonymous

My face boasts an idiot’s leer.
My thoughts,
lucid as flame,
broken as speech, tangled in misfiring paths.
These limbs
once strong bearers of…
Now like trunks and vines,
both fallen.

A wish to lie under stars,
but enrapped in six sides of plaster.
Faces come and surely go.
None important
None worth the exertion
of smile.
Except the little boy
who stopped to stare.
A memory incarnate
worth the water and salt
escaping these wisdom worn eyes

straining to feed my head
with the incoherent news from the window
yet slipping ever so subtly into
an exhaustion so profound
even light gives up sometimes.

*

a small victory
~c.m. mclamb

It is three weeks
after being told of
his newly risen counts,
two weeks
after my official
undetectable diagnosis,
and the first time
we’ve returned to making
truly passionate love.

We are once again
full of each other
as we lay down to rest,
coiled around curves,
nestled into folds,
fingers entwined,
caramel skin pressed
against soft, wooly hair;
safe for the moment
from the fire fighting
to spawn within.

*

LEFT INFERIOR FRONTAL GYRUS
~Art Stewart

Today my left inferior frontal gyrus went wild choosing
one word over another, again and again –

ant in amber over bug in sap: note
the color of the ant is black as anthracite; the ant

is suspended
in buckwheat honey solid while a bug

could be anything, a blob, not clear
as a nine-spot ladybird beetle immobilized

just so in a gold drop
of resin on a leaky branch of the peach tree

out back, decrepit with age, but in spring
oh yes, in spring, the tree comes alive

again, choosing
to push forth

delicate leaves, pure petals.

With credit for this poem to Circle, Turtle, Ashes.

Red Giant
~pantoum by Jon Dean

When the Sun explodes
in whorls of warmth,
with outstretched flares,
it will embrace us all.

In whorls of warmth
pulling our faces to brightness,
it will embrace us all –
distinction lost in its radiance.

Pulling our faces to brightness,
our shadows will burn into the ground,
distinction lost in its radiance,
our dreams will fade to silhouettes.

Our shadows burnt into the ground,
dancers in the dimming darkness.
Our dreams will fade to silhouettes –
we will spin to ashes.

Dancers in the dimming darkness
with outstretched arms,
we will spin to ashes
when the Sun explodes.

*

Sea Change
~Claire M. Jackson

The loudspeaker squawks,
Bringing to a close tonight’s
Visiting hours.

I take her hand, then.
Kiss her wrinkled forehead; the
Skin is soft and cool.

She’s at her twilight,
Of the day; for the year;
Of her brilliant life.

Rheumy eyes meet mine
Full of helpless, frustrated
Doubt and confusion.

“I know you, don’t I?”
She’s adrift, searching my face
For safe harbor.

I can hear it, then.
The susurration of waves
On entropy’s shore.

Washing her away,
Carrying her out toward
Icy black waters.

I have no vessel
Able to navigate these
Dark, poisonous swells.

Might as well try to
Drain the Pacific with a
Ladle and a sieve;

Might as well try to
Raise the Titanic with a
Dime store rod-and-reel;

Might as well try to
Build, with seashells and white sand, a
Fortress ’round our hearts.

*

On Call
~Greg P.

Restless nights, sudden arousals,
dreams which seem like some
festering sore of unfinished,
incomplete evaluations
of a rough-hewn history.

Sometimes waking in a chill,
others in a sweat.
All managing to underscore
how there is no refuge
in slumber.

So I keep piecing together
daytime events and daytime time,
when silence is no safe haven,
and only underscores that
anything can happen at any moment.