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All rights revert to the individuals published. These works may not be reproduced without permission of the author. These pages may not be reproduced without the express written permission of Performance Poets Association, and may not be stored in any electronic data retrieval system. |
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Winners |
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Little Things
I am bound to you sitting Beneath an umbrella of warm silence Your eyes following open-mouthed wrens Hopping near our feet repeating Secrets to hushed grass That carpet the hour we walk through
I am bound to you arching your eyebrow Asking for understanding Knowing the angle will melt anger Heating the surface of my nervous smile Waiting for comfort
I am bound to you bowing Opening restaurant doors that promise Escape from beeper and phone Intruding upon our valued time
I am bound to you smiling at waiters Who interrupt our rhythm Bring us wine when we are already Intoxicated with each other
Joan Magiet
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Candles of hope
There is a Cathedral calm about the place Voices echo softly down the hallways Whispers sound like vespers prayed
We wait against the west wall Wrapped in blue robes We sit in wheelchairs
Skeletons, our skin sallow as bee’s wax Eyes flicker, ablaze in sunken sockets They flutter hopefully in shining skulls
Blue nubs for the I-V needles defined by wraps of brown bandage Await the cool burn of the I-V hose. We search the parochial beige hospital walls
Van Goghs, Latrecs, Gaugins Stare back at us On dead canvas they imitate life
We wait in private heavens or private hells We whisper the empty question “How are you today?”
We answer with the lie “I’m fine. Thank you.” We sit like fluttering candles We dare not snuff the fires out.
Matt Connors |
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WHOLlY AMPERSAND
I found a key chain, or it found me a zero of beads that dangle, no key, no ID, just a silver ampersand, a sign I knew but didn’t understand— the 27th letter, and per se, the end that follows Z, a closed 8, its tails crossed to a T.
It turned me thoughtful, that silver symbol, made me add a light-pull to the short key chain, so I could wear the ampersand, priestly round my neck. feel it with my fingers, press it to my breast.
I blessed it with a smiling prayer addressed “tow whom it may concern”. My vision an ampersand to bridge the division of signs, of star & cross & crescent, divisions of man and man, of good & evil, hand in hand, made one by my wholly ampersand.
Charles Ferrara |
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Accepting Night
Shadows of solar eclipse elicit doubt Our world will survive the darkness. We live for light, accepting night As welcome respite from day’s labor.
Our world will survive the darkness As long as we trust in day’s return. A welcome respite from day’s labor, Night might bring love and sleep, deep needs.
As long as we trust in day’s return, We’ll resist the shadow of doubt Night won’t bring love and sleep; deep needs Met, we thrive; unmet, we fold.
We’ll resist the shadow of doubt That solar eclipses elicit. Brought love and sleep, deep needs, We live for light, accepting night.
George Held |
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I Have A Friend Who Signs
I have a friend who signs for the deaf. She teaches kids who can’t hear how to read and gives them voice to speak their mind. She can hear and talk of course and has no need to sign when she’s “off duty” so to speak. But even then whenever we dine or are engaged in a private exchange her hands have a way of rising out of her lap and into the air fluttering like trained birds her fingers fanning the breeze. Her hands seem to have a life of their own and fly higher if our words are too hot or the soup is not. “The deaf” she tells me almost in a whisper “have a thought that when they die God switches off the lights so they will know they have arrived in Heaven.”
Joseph E. Scalia |
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TECATOS
Brother Calvin toured East Harlem’s dirty, drum-rumbling, cuchifrito-scented streets. In his pockets he packed gum balls, lollipops and quarters to distribute as limosnas to kids, cripples and beggars. Flying high — but without drugs or alcohol — he was buzzed up on benevolence for God’s unfortunates.
One morning on 117th and Lex he spotted a caramel-colored muchacha perked on a long splayed staircase. She sat hunched over, her pink-tipped fingers scratching her arm pits in clow motion. Ebony hair fell across brown shoulders, breasts like ripe avocados bulged beneath her nylon blouse.
He couldn’t believe his eyes: men in rags nodded near his brown beauty, cigarettes burning into their fingers their arms a patchworks of purple scars. He thought: these must be the tecatos Reverend Arquímedes had warned him about.
He slipped into a reverie: he’d resettle his brown beauty away from this scum of the slum care for her every painful minute of the way as she kicked her drug habit. He’d turn her on to books, museums, plays, parks, and beuna gente.
Her Spanish sighs and naked thighs flashed through his mind sex would only be icing on the cake.
Suddenly his brown beauty lifted her head Oye, camarón! Yo, undercover cop! A loud rustle swept the tecato flock, eyes swirling fire, glaring down at him his quarter jingling as he sped off the block.
Gil Fagiani |
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Performance Poets Association® |