2006 Inglis House Poetry Contest Winners

2006 Contest Winners

Below are the winners of the 2006 Inglis House Poetry Contest. There were two categories in this year's contest. Category 1 was open to all writers and the poems had to have some connection to disability. Category 2 was open only to writers with disabilities and could be on any topic. For each category a first, second and third place prize was given as well as three honorable mentions. Once again, the competition was stiff and many of the excellent poems that are not seen below will appear in On the Outskirts a chapbook which will be released at the end of August.

Category 1

First Place

Ellen LaFleche
Northampton, Masssachusetts

ANGEL, WITH PARKINGSON'S DISEASE

Angel slaps hash and eggs on a plate,
her body swaying as if on sea legs.

When she shimmies over to the booth
where Joe Dugas is waiting for his breakfast
the plates jingle in her hands
like belly-dance cymbals.

Joe - who lost his ring finger at the mill -
pats her shoulder.     Angel, he murmurs,
and licks sugar off his donut. Joe’s touch triggers
a ferocious rippling in Angel’s hips.

Her braid strains against its hairnet.

On lunch break Angel slips her tips into the juke.
Alone in a booth she head-bobs to Patsy Cline,
gulps a chocolate milkshake
and a couple of burgers with the works.

At night Angel sits in bed
and lets her twined hair out of captivity.

She thinks of Joe,
still married to Cathy
going on twenty-five years.

Angel’s braid unwinds,
graceful as a double helix
opening itself for love.

Joe has never seen the uncoiling
but he can imagine waves of hair
boiling down Angel’s back.

All he wants is to swim his nine good fingers
through those crashing breakers.

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Second Place

Christine Stark
Minnesota

MARCY

the black haired old lady with a hump growing out her spine starts yelling Goddamn pea soup gain can’t eat this shit everyone ignores her she does this every night the nurse passing out meds gets to my table puts down a white dixie cup with two pink pills a large blue pill and one long skinny yellow pill I toss them in my mouth take a cup of water flush them down open my mouth lift my tongue See I say I stack the water cups inside each other smash them down into my half eaten pea soup I agree with Marcy I say the pea soup sucks here This isn’t a resort the nurse says No shit I say she moves on to Richard a former high school track coach math teacher from Baraboo in here for attempted suicide I haven’t seen him in a week Next time I’ll succeed he told me when I first came in watch out for those pills you get hooked on them and you’ll always be under the shrinks I see what he’s saying but right now I don’t care don’t mind the high every night when the nurse leaves his table I move next to him Richard I say how’s it going he looks at me his face as long as frankenstein goes back to eating his pea soup drips it all over his tray lap the front of his shirt Richard I whisper what’s wrong with you he keeps eating Leave him alone little girl Mable says from one table over she is Indian like my grandma but they won’t let her wear her turquoise jewelry they say it’s too pointy she could hurt someone or herself What’s wrong with him Mable Little girl I like your hair she pats her head dark like mine Thanks I say Richard keeps eating Mable is in her fifties I’ve had a hard life little girl she says I know I say she’s told me before about the abuse at the school the breakdowns the white husband who beat her I’m sorry I say and I am sorry for her sorry for Lori sorry for Richard He got buzzed yesterday she says wiggles her finger around her ear Huh I say Buzzed you know electrocuted No I look at Richard he doesn’t seem to hear us Mable turns her back starts to unwrap a dinner roll Richard I say he eats his pea soup sits up perfectly straight

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Third place

Andrena Zawinski
Oakland, California

HOODOOED

1.
On the poet's table is the stuff
of soul making practice, objects
brown and dusty: wild garlic
and fresh ginger, Indian corn
and Spanish moss, pigeon feather,
chestnut, a peel of bark
webbed inside with spider work.

And here we are, the ones
who write as if for our lives.
And he is there, the poet
imploring us to touch, to look
inside to feel. Soul maker,
icon raker, gris gris keeper,
spirit eater, he murmurs,

take it in your hands, smell it,
taste it, seek inside
the soul.

Stroke it, crawl into it, the poet
whispers, paper leaves
wrestling air.

2.
But what I'm really taken in by,
in this practice of art seeking soul,
is the sister saddled in her wheelchair
at my side. Her jailer body twisted,
she carves fisted words around
the paper edge, blind to lines
and drooling. She jolts and gargles sound.

Soul seeker, spell weaver, angel chaser,
magic maker, I spin off
to a burnt out grave of trees, and gasp
where once I wept, charred bark scent
at my fingertips, slivers digging in
where sequoias splintered to the ground,
earth crumbling at the touch
expecting stone.

3. The writers read what they have written,
and in their words she becomes
everything to me:
Someone turns her up Midwest
as a patch of earth
that once was farmland.

Another raises her as tribal feathers
brushing Appalachian twilight.

Someone else reports her birth
with gunfire south of the border.

Still another spills her haplessly
across a page, spider eggs
loosened from the web.

And if I could I would wrap her in wild
and purple orchids, but my welled words
instead crawl with her among the inky
fireweeds up the sideline of the margin
in a scrawl, spellbound
by this new silence, by a meaning
difficult to decipher.

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Honorable Mention

Stella Ward Whitlock
Fayetteville, North Carolina

PATCHWORK

Glasses pinch his nose as Richard
sits in his wheelchair by the window
taking tiny stitches in the kaleidoscope
of quilt spread across his lap.
Sunlight silhouettes his figure
bent over the fragments of cloth.

A farmer, he cares for his animals—
horses, pigs, cows, goats, chickens
and others more exotic—wheeling
his chair across the fields or driving
the back acres in his modified golf cart.

Sometimes he’ll talk about his adopted
children—changing a diaper, monitoring
math homework, or chauffeuring them
to music lessons, a basketball game.

In spring during birthing season, he leads
schoolchildren around his private zoo,
explaining life cycles of peacocks, llamas,
miniature horses, pigs, quail, farm animals,
frogs, and fish. Everyone pets the animals,
leaves with an azure-eyed peacock feather.

Richard reads his Bible daily, touches
the spirits of all those he sees and prays
for those he doesn’t, attends his church
faithfully, reverently, helps
those more fortunate than he.

In harsh mountain winters he splits
firewood to heat his home, slips
and slides in his golf-cart over snow
and ice, up and down the frozen mountain
slopes to feed and tend the dependent,

and at the end of day, in suffering
light, he sits again in his wheelchair,
by that window, back bent, hands
lifted, working on an unfinished quilt.

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Honorable Mention

Peter Bergquist
Los Angeles, California

FROM HERE TO THERE

I wait till it gets late enough
for the afternoon to cool,
then set off with the dogs
for the golf course.
Running its perimeter, I scan
the flank of trees inside the fence.
I’ve never noticed how tall
some of them are, those firs
that always seem so out of place
and yet so welcome in LA.
Through bougainvillaea sprawling
on the fence, in snatches
I can see the fairway, bathed in
a horizontal stream of sunlight,
its grass a lake of green fire.
Far ahead beyond the footpath
two people walk away from me,
backlit by the sunset to silhouettes.
From their hair I assume them women,
from seeming shortness take them
to be young--schoolgirls, friends
or maybe sisters. One’s feet
are splayed, her body rocking
side to side like a metronome,
an unfunny Charlie Chaplin.
The other holds her by the arm
to help her navigate, perhaps,
and catch her if she trips.
Turning a corner of the course,
I crane my neck to watch the girls
slowly cross a lawn toward a house.
A golfer with his shouldered bag
is striding down the dusk,
cursing at an ill-hit ball.
All at once my mind fills
with deformities, so many kinds--
those we see, others hid inside.
I have to stop to catch my breath,
to recover.

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Honorable Mention

Ellen LaFleche
Northampton, Masssachusetts

Alzheimer’s

She bangs her old bones like bongos
slams her brittle ribs against the bedrail

In the other bed
there is a white-headed
woman whose teeth shiver all night long

What is her name

She bangs her old bones like bongos
smells the orange moon
its crescent of memory:
summer nights on the farm
cows lumbering the fields like elephants

She rummages her pocket for a rosary
the nuns taught her to rub the cold
glass beads like worry stones         she fingers her string of ribs

She smells the moon
summer night on the farm         hay-fragrant
the hired hand crawling up her little legs

She slaps her fist against the wall
of the cell she shares with a mouth
of shivering teeth         a crawling hand

Her old bongo bones
bang her name against her bed frame
her old bones know the name
she does not know

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Category 2

First Place

Sheila Black
Las Cruces, New Mexico

This Dance

We are in the lingo of social workers
self-identifying. The hostess has no trouble
spotting us, leading us to our party,
the long table with the crutches leaned
behind it, a wheelchair
or two, the rest of us,
who limped here across the length of the red
dining room, with the fake Tiffany lights,
the arctic air-conditioning.

I have spent years not wanting
to be this person, squinting at mirrors
as though one distortion could black
out another, don’t mention it
and it isn’t there—Mother’s philosophy.

The afternoon is nearing its end,
the shadows lengthening in the parking lot.
We could be anywhere but we are
here with our stories. Timidly we pull
them out like rare coins, only to discover
how common they are at this table.

Jolie speaks of how she was stoned
every day at the bus. Mike D. remembers the boy
who liked to sneak up behind him
and with a blow to the back of the head
knock him flat to the ground. I tell them about the
beautiful blonde boy who followed me around
the playground all year third grade
screaming Why don’t you just die? Freak.

We speculate happily into the dusk
what makes them this way—the normal ones.
We speak of animal behavior and the group ethic,
and we do our best to keep the old
bitterness from our voices.

Then Elaine, wheeling herself restlessly back
and forth in her wheelchair says that what has always
sustained her has been the ballet.
I’m crazy for the dancers, she says, describing
the posters she hung on her wall as girl.
Farrell, Barishnikov, Markova, other names
I’ve never heard. The art of it. The arms poised still
over the feet moving so fast.

Her vowels go round and rich, her eyes
glaze, brighten, and the rest of us look up to
see the dining room is empty; in the parking
lot darkness has fallen, and we look at Elaine,
her face aglow, her crippled legs

hanging useless, having just demonstrated
the flexibility of the human.

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Second Place

Paul Kahn
Auburndale, Massachusetts

ART SCHOOL 1963: THE FLOOD

I wander around, carrying my memories awkwardly

like they were someone else's babies
like I was embarrassed by their smelly nakedness.

What was I, an almost sixty-year old man, doing with these strident, elemental things,

here in this squat, ochre reef of a building
where I went to art school more than forty years ago?

In the lobby I see a battered, wooden bench and know,
it is where I sat the day that JFK was shot.

Mr. Ablow, normally composed, normally a bit sardonic, had told us.
His voice unsteady, trying with his handkerchief to keep his face intact.

Suddenly the world seemed green like we were underwater,

Confused and terrified we tried to speak,
but our words became vague gurgles,
and we floundered from our easels
that bobbed like sailboats in an angry tide,
a tide that sucked us down the elevator shaft
into the lobby, where I grabbed this bench for anchorage.

I sank there with my feet on the tilting floor,
this same ugly floor of grimy black and red inlaid linoleum,
wishing that my best friend Caroline would find me.

And when she did it was the sweetest miracle,

because she had searched for me as urgently as I had wanted her,
and begged for comfort with her giant seal pup eyes,
and held me close so I could feel
how dry and warm she was under her rough coat.

Days later, the world still water-wrecked and stained
ordinary order still sagged under the weight of grief,
I sat with Caroline on the landing of the fire escape behind our school,
hunched against the damp November cold,
and spoke a eulogy for the dead prince of our age.

Buffalo Bill's defunct, I recited,
jesus he was a handsome man
how do you like your blueeyed boy Mr. Death

Below us on the muddy riverbank
bulldozers sat unmoving like the carcasses of dinosaurs,
and the windows of the warehouses across the river
were as blank and ominous as the shades of government agents,

guarding our future, now sickened by a queasy paranoia.

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Third Place

C. J. Stuart
Glenwood, Oregon

I'M HERE ARE YOU?

The receptionist calls my name,
She asks me at the window, “Are you so and so?”

And I answer, “Yes, even on the days I don’t want to be,”

I was asked over the phone for the reason for my doctor
visit and she asks me that again,

I sit and wait some more, this time in a smaller room,
The assistant wraps my arm with the blood pressure cuff
and ask why I am there,

I’d like to ask her how all these absent minded folk
“who must be reading my chart” function on the days when
I am not around to remind them of the obvious,

Then finally the doctor appears holding my chart open as
he reads it and asks, “What brings you in today?”

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Honorable Mention

Sheila Black
Las Cruces, New Mexico

Reconstruction

I think of the trees there first:
how large and tender
they seemed, breathing green
above the brick colonials,
the loneliness of other people’s windows,
glittering under the sulfurous
street lamps, past midnight
when the pills stopped
working, and I could feel
my bones knitting themselves
into a new shape.

The rings of trees accreted
slowly, one by one,
spread ripples from a dropped
stone, the healed bones hardening
a different white on the x-rays,
not even a ghost of the form
they had been.

The codeine was blue, shaped
like a small bullet.
My mother did not believe in such simple
relief of pain. She had stayed
awake even when we were born,
seen us slide out bloodied.
Where had I gone wrong?

All summer they brought me trays
of food, bowls of plums
shimmering with water, cooked
spinach, a limp sea of green,
said, “Eat,” but I was wary,
remembered the myths I had learned:
If you take a single seed
you will stay down here forever.

I swallowed the pills furtively,
felt myself plunge, a girl
down a well, my own voice calling
back at me from the curved walls.

I was remade, and I fell,
searching my old self
in the trees above our house,
their age passing through me,
their green hearts blooming in me.
All I wanted was to remember everything,
the ways a child asks questions
to resurrect the moment of origin
the expression of a face
before it is born.

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Honorable Mention

Lucia Quinn
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

CAN YOU SEE ME?

When you look at me in my wheelchair
Tell me, what is it that you see?
Is it the broken body sitting there
Or do you really look and see me?

Can you see the loving wife and mother
From all those many years ago
That took care of her husband and children
And was forever on the go

Or do you see a lifeless body
That requires too much care
She can’t feed or dress herself
Much less, fix her own hair?

Can you see her by the crib
In the middle of the night?
She’s listening so intently
To hear Lori’s breath, so light.

Or do you see her as a job,
One that you do swiftly?
It doesn’t matter what she wants
As long as you’re done quickly

Can you see the young mother
Struggle to teach Lori to write?
Lori writes with her left hand
Her mother wrote with her right.

Or do you see her as being punished
For something she has done?
She no longer deserves respect
Her punishment has just begun.

Can you see her making turtle shells
For Dave and Mike to wear
So they can go trick-or-treating
For candy they will share

Or do you see no longer a need
To consider what she is feeling,
To show any compassion now
Would just be time consuming?

Can you see her sitting
French-braiding Jenni’s hair?
Jenni’s hair was to her waist
Her mother took such care.

Or do you look into my eyes
And see the pain that is there?
All her hopes and dreams are gone,
As if they were never there?

Can you see her lying in a hospital bed
Wondering what she will do?
Where and how are her children?
How will they ever make it through?

Or do you see the quadriplegic
Struggling with every endeavor
Because some drunk got in his car
And changed her life forever?

Can you see the young woman
Her spirit and will so strong?
No matter what life hands her
She’ll make right from any wrong.

Now when you look into my eyes
I’ll tell you what you should see,
The loving soul that God created
Who knows her life was meant to be.

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Honorable Mention

Honorable Mention

Heather J. Kirk
Scottsdale, AZ

IT SERVES ME

"It serves you," they say, "get to sit around all day, collect a government check, sleep until noon, do what you want - poetry and art! This illness you've got, it serves you."

If I can't use the Masters Degree I went back to get, took out some loans, and worked myself through; loved what I did, was one of the best - then sure, I suppose, it serves me.

If I can't make appointments, can't talk on the phone, can't get out of bed 'til noon, because of nausea, and heaviness, confusion, fatigue, a bedroom that claims nearly half of my life, (and forget the part that you're thinking about, fatigue leaves no room for that,) then why not say that it serves me?

If that government check (from insurance I paid) cannot reach the end of the month, and I'll do this and that to make ends meet, then afterwards have to sleep, but slightly hold at bay the fear about how money and bills refuse to agree, then, if you say so, I'll tell you, it serves me.

Have I explained the "it" that they mean? Not only fatigue, but the pain throughout, ebbing and flowing on its own little whim, responding, ignoring, preserving my believing that if I only keep trying to somehow figure it out, I'll control and defeat it. My personal Mr. Rumplestiltskin and I, we have an agreement; if it allows me ease some of the time, I'll give it full days of my life.

And the forgetting. Faces and names, and what people are talking about, and words so necessary for conversation, and for writing. What was it they said that serves me?

And now, after so long, if this "it" that supposedly serves me, were to ever go way, and I were to try to re-enter the workforce, with no job history for six years or more, and attempt to explain that what took my life could possibly come back once they hire me... Ironic, but it's leaving will not serve me.

And when I went to God, with all my complaints, He simply said, 'It serves Me."

I suppose I could be angry at that, but the anger is just about gone. This time He did not explain, but He's said it before, "I'll work good out of anything in your life..." So for Him I write some poetry, and for Him I sing a song; I photograph His creation, and use a computer to play around. And spend miles of time answering questions for those who seek, and really want to know Him.

So if it serves Him? Yes, I must confess, and then must trust, it serves me.

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