New Words 2010 Poetry Contest Winners

December 31, 2010 First Place

Steven Coughlin, Athens, “For the El Camino”

How my father polished her each Sunday morning--
an Old Milwaukee in one hand, a yellow sponge
in the other. How he sang along with Sam Cooke
crooning from the tape deck. For Christina Psaros’ pink
and white miniskirt. For the way her bare legs looked
sweeter than any Larry Bird jump shot.
For that Saturday night in September when my father
dangled the El Camino’s keys before me
demanding I repeat his instructions.
How the resentment for my father who bestowed
on that brown behemoth the affection
he denied my mother disappeared.
For each Circuit City stockholder whose investments
resulted in the construction of unlit parking lots.
For the El Camino’s six-foot bed
where my inexperienced fingers tore off Christina’s
black bra buckle. How we delighted in the El Camino’s
absorbent springs. How Christina called my name
as if every letter had significance.
For Sam Cooke filling the awkward silence
of our ride home. How Christina didn’t kiss me
goodnight that night or any night after.
For my father, the next morning, discovering Christina’s
torn bra buckle. How I watched from the kitchen
window as he ceased his duet with Sam Cooke
and considered the small black clasp.
For my father, who we barely took notice of when home,
tossing the evidence to the wind and sidewalk.
For my father dipping his yellow sponge
in a cracked bucket, rivulets of grime dripping
down its sides. For my father, nursing his last
Old Milwaukee, working into that Sunday afternoon,
re-cleaning each inch of the El Camino.



Second Place

Karen Schubert, Youngstown, “Brink”

In some New Orleans neighborhoods they had four minutes to get to the roof
where they should have stowed an axe, they really should have left.

The city is 290 years old, new houses are up on stilts. My mom and I
ride the Katrina Tour bus. Our driver lived in a FEMA trailer

for two years and is monitored for mesothelioma. This is my first
time here. My mom was here fifty years ago on her honeymoon –

she was nineteen and her husband thirty-one. After a number
of Singapore slings, she could not lift the fork to her mouth. I don’t know

what he was thinking, my father, when he plucked this country girl
from college. She was learning chemistry, not how to jump

onto a floating house with children in her arms. In the bungalow where the bus
pauses, a couple drowned in the attic. The debris is gone. I am living

in Texas, the farthest I have lived from her. I sip my first mint julep
at a bistro on Canal Street. She does not want me to live in Texas.

There are trolley car sculptures all over New Orleans. When we spot our first,
we think it is a coffin. One man, holding two children, leaped onto a house.

He set them down and vaulted back to get his mother. She had a heart attack
and died. He picked up the last child, jumped, she slipped his arms.

They never found her. In the cemetery, the early dead were stowed to rot above ground,
their bones swept out for the next family member. My daughter lives in the Midwest.

In the Times-Picayune, I read about the plan to rebuild that doesn’t mention
rising water from climate change. My mother left my father when I was twelve.

She took me. I left my daughter with her father because he asked me to. On roofs,
survivors beat back snakes and alligators while waiting for helicopters to drop

them onto a piece of bridge under water on both ends.
There are blue tarps all over New Orleans, bikers, birds, jazz, wrought

iron, a riot of flowers, X’s on buildings with the number of dead.
A bikini in heels beckons us from a bar on Bourbon Street. My daughter calls.

I hope to bring her here someday. My mom and I chat up the oyster shucker.
He’s the best in the city. He shows us his awards, and the tiny stones he calls pearls.



Third Place

Rebecca Morgan Frank, Cincinnati, “City Morning”

The monkey house wakes up
the neighborhood with a call and response

not unlike the whoops of homecoming night:
hollow, incessant, hard to decipher the edge

between joy and lament. The other team has scored
a point. The zookeeper is out of bananas.

They have no species in the early morning hours
from blocks away. How could I have confused

an orangutan and a lemur? A gorilla and a macague?
We walk closer and they have names

their parents never chose. Their extended
families have fallen out of touch.

The children are placing their hands on the glass.
The monkey’s breath fogs it up in return.

They’re silent when we circle them.
They chew and stare.

Later, they, too, will hear the neighborhood –
dusk’scalls for children,nightfall’s moans and fights.

We’re each other’s misplaced habitats.
Calling out into the city’s rising and falling light,

hoping someone will hear. Each thinking
we’ve made them just like us.



Honorable Mentions

Keith Woodruff, Akron, “Merchant Marine”

THE WORLD’S too much water, crushes
you into longing for those deer that pour
from the woods at dusk. Tomato plants
to water. Cats in windows watching,
still as clocks, as you mow. Dark birds
clinging to a bulging suet net that swings.
The geography of your own backyard.
Twenty years on the ocean and nothing
had ever so clearly shown that great expanse
as when they radioed to say your father
was dying as you docked in Germany.
Was it like the sparrows? The docked ships
gave scraps and shelter but they’d stay
too long, you said. Hundreds of miles from shore,
they’d fly out for land just to return
after days of searching and fall dead,
exhausted, onto the ship. Or like a son,
tapping “wait, wait,” in Morse code?
Words without any song to carry them home.



Roger Craik, Ashtabula, “View of Delft”

Here, close to where four centuries ago
Johannes Vermeer stood, looked the other way,
beheld his city spreading to his eye,
upon this iron bridge I shiver, watch Delft grow
dour, unpicturesque, its river edged
with tiny drab concerns: Gerritschippen,
Popinflas, Loew and Stein. Further on,
a smudge of ill-lit shops. In the distance,
cranes. There the harbor begins.

This is a prospect of the edge of things.
No guidebook, signpost, names the nondescript,
directs one’s steps to places such as this
unless by chance. But in this spot,
as daylight weakens and as shapes congeal,
the eye unjostled and the mind unforced
by beauty’s spiring self-insistences
are stilled. Nothing moves. Only the blue
darkening. One man standing in subdued
exhilaration. To him alone, he feels,
words might confide themselves, words not smoothed
by numberless hands, but words made new, made real
by circumstance as fresh as paint,
whose only use is coloring.

Near silence. Solitude. The gradual
ebb and leakage into truth.



Bill Ebert, Hudson, “First Car”

Someone left a black rhino,
shiny as the day it rolled into life,
in one of those spaces near
the front door of the Acme.

Two stooped stick figures
look both ways, then
edge into the street
fronting the parking lot.

One in a seersucker suit,
pressed white shirt, tie, and
straw, snap-brimmed hat
patiently guides the other
by the elbow.

And she, in a cotton
shirtwaist dress, pastel
peonies printed all over
its full skirt, gathered by
a pink Dinah Shore belt,
holds gravity at bay
with a noisy aluminum cane.

Hand on the beast,
he swings wide the
stout door of a
1948 Buick Roadmaster.

Knees chastely pressed together,
she dips, slides onto
the Silver Meteor-sized seat and
pulls a pair of size-five penny loafers
into the cool depths beneath the dash.

Cane tucked by her seat,
he leans in and whispers.
Muted laughter and wisps of
Evening in Paris travel
down the afternoon breeze.

Door closed,
watery, cornflower blue eyes
follow him around to the driver’s side of
their first car,
her face beaming
over-the-moon.



Shelley Chernin, Gates Mills, “Above It All”

Imagine you’re a girl on ten mile stilts............
Nicky Mehta
I take great strides
carefully; it’s easy
to trip over
the Rockies or knock
Boeings to the ground.

Nearly stratospheric,
I fill my backpack
with sunblock. Never
visit the ozone layer
without it. I also carry

a red Duncan yo-yo
with an extra-long string
and astronomical
binoculars. Sometimes
it’s hard to find

loved ones without
magnification, even
on a clear day. Once
a man in Callicoon
tried to look

up my skirt, but
I was too high
for his aperture. Long
distance romance
is for the birds.

I watch them pecking
in their family nests,
built on tree tips
far below me. I see
specks on specks.