2007 di-verse-city Anthology Winners

 

Second Place
Father

He carries the Culligan tank
on his back, the thick clunking music as iron
strikes flesh. He struggles up the stairs one foot,
one foot in alliteration.
He is bringing soft water
to small rural farms. What is soft for them is hard for
him. The lead weight above him is obliterating. It will not
curve with him, bend to him, his will—
It stands alone. The crushing weight,
no, has no conscience. It is concrete in its simplicity,
swish sweat seeking him, pummeling him,
intense, sinking. How hard
can an old heart burn?
The farm dog attacks his leg. Chews at him.
Beyond the weight he has mastered a sharp kick—
The dog retreats. He is bringing home his paycheck
bringing home his paycheck. His
feet are rubber on the farmhouse stairs.
He does his duty. He is beyond himself
in the trenches of the Aleutian Islands,
Bombed daily and daily and daily.
Liberating Dachau. Only one speck in the
Allied Forces, going on, on, on. Picking
potatoes as a migrant, school at the wayside,
His body will—not—stop. Tending his family. His
body will not stop. His body will—
Not stop. Do not ask for more.

Becky Liestman
Austin, Texas

Third Place
The Gatherers

Inside spring evenings moist with mown wild onion,
we crouch near the footbridge, watching men
at the farmer’s market load pea snaps, berries, okra
by bushels onto rusted flatbed backs of diesels.
Squatting, we strain to spot choice bounty
dropped among Copenhagen cans and pigeons,
while horseflies flit in sagebrush bowed in breezes.
When the last leaves, we descend like thieves.
Under skies tinged the color of grapeskin,
Grandmother tells how, in China, men row onto lakes
strewn with lotus to drop plums into the floating blossoms
and at dawn return to collect the perfumed dew inside.
At last, aching arms stretched long by a crate
of dirty produce, she walks us home, past empty houses
and peers sideways into windows to secret rooms
wrapped like sweet oranges in paper towels.

J. Todd Hawkins
Austin, Texas

 

Honorable Mention

Charlie Noble’s Key Palace Blues

1
He breathed into the mic, strumming
His electric soul maker in ways
That made the ladies wish they
Were played in a tangle of
Wires and wood.

“We could produce such music, too,”
They shouted over the blues,
“If you touched us like that.”

But he did touch them.
Through the smoky stage lights of the old theatre
Or in the bar down the street,
Singing sweet Sunday promises to the
Born again with his
‘Soul Power’ praise
And hallelujah brother thumping bass.

2
And the old theatre? Silent,
until you rescued it from a small town fate:
broken windows and the tattooed
artwork of love-infested teens out much too late
for a school night.

You opened velvet curtains to the
soul shaking sounds of the Heartland,
of Chicago, of Naw’lans and the Delta,
(of Canada, even, with that
skinny white boy from Toronto)

Your joke of the night as legendary
as those kings and queens of blues who grace
your stage.

You saved us, Mr. Noble.

As Walmart looms nearer
and our restaurants and hardware stores close,
as the gas prices don’t allow us to
wander far from our rural home,
We need those soul making Saturday evenings
(releasing us from earthly chains we’re forging)
with those down & dirty ditties
we can dance to(o).

3
And she did. She danced the blues.

Not hip hop, leanin’ and bouncin’

And white teeing all over the floor
Not rock either, with its pogo stick

Flailing, crowd surfing it hardcore
Not a two-steppin’ country slide
Pinchin’ toes in a pointy boots glide

She danced the blues.

The low down my man is gone blues
The my favorite guitar has been pawned blues
The lover sneaking out your back door blues
The I am the muse you sing for blues

With the sultry shake of widening hips
And the sweet cinnamon pout of her made-up lips
The sway and the shimmy of her feet and finger tips

She danced the blues.

You watched her
And were
Reborn

Samika Swift
Denton, Texas

The Tango

That’s what changed her,
though I couldn’t have known
when we met for dinner —
the first time in two years.

Oh, the red bolero jacket
and matching red heels
with ankle straps
were clues,

those, and the fifty pounds
she wasn’t wearing, the short hair cut
in gray-bashing brunette —
they all spelled out something new

that spring evening at the café.
But those things were just icing
on the cake — accessories of change,
not the instigators.

No, it had to be the tango —
and not the ballroom variety.
Hell no, it was the street tango
straight from Argentina

where men stood in lines
in the late eighteen hundreds,
portenos who had just entered Buenos Aires,
waiting their turn at the bordelos

on the fringes of society,
improvising prospective encounters
of passion and lust
tinged with frustration and unrequited love,

love of a land they had left
and women they would never know,
tantalizing each other, hip to hip,
one leading the other in ochos —

tiny figure-eights back-stepped
with swiveling hips and up on toes,
always executed up on the toes,
accentuating the calves,

elongating the legs —
and all these words tumble
from the lips of a friend
I no longer know,

about a world I cannot grasp,
a world she sought
and danced her way into,
fully aware of the transformation

from the woman who remained
at his bedside long enough
to watch him die, long enough

to bring a final blessing
to the years they shared.
It’s the ultimate conversation
between a man and a woman
she whispers across our table,

And you never anticipate the lead
she adds, straightening her jean jewelry.
And I don’t know if she’s talking about the final
two years with her husband,
or if it’s just the tango.

Anne Schneider
Kerrville, Texas


The Fat Man

Ed’s gallery no longer exists. Nor does Ed. Nor does
New Orleans of the early seventies, but that evening his high metal
ceilings threw our ginned voices
back onto paper masks affixed to plaster walls.

Eyeholes in hand-made paper faces stared back, often into those who
had modeled for them. Narcissus wore
a white feather, fluttery in the vented air. Too many
contenders for that role. Therapist looked exhausted,

all her breath sucked out. Its model inhaled and moved
to other rooms. Dreamer has lost one side of his face, the left cheek and
most of the brow. Sarah knew him,
the guy who cut her hair, waiting for an inheritance,

pleasantly spaced. In one room, dismembered parts
of bodies posed, athletic, minus faces. At one-fifteen
we finally agreed on Dreamer, only a hundred, attached
with silver pins. He mused in our parlor as if in a better

world than we could give, our Hamedan a mere throw-rug, our German
crystal goblets as coarsened mugs
to his golden atelier beyond our leveed crescent. A lamp
beneath cast his shadow onto the ceiling, a Platonic

lesson in grays and Sears’ best eggshell. We talked
of preservation, a vinyl box—but merely talked.
I put Dreamer on several Texas walls after the divorce,
still the same evanescence, a yearning for another realm.

During one move, I left Dreamer pinned in an empty
room, took the last box to the car, returned to place it
in the passenger seat on a pillow. Gone. The pins
adangle. Guatemalan Marylou scrubbed the kitchen floor.

Oh, Meester, the fat man, he took it to the trash.
I ran to the bin where cantaloupe flesh soiled Dreamer.
Seeds massed in his creases. Grease soaked the folds
because the landlord, a brisk and efficient man who mistook
Dreamer for Abandonment, compacted him before the toss.

Lewis Garvin
Houston, Texas


Mesquite

It grows groundward,
clumping at the base of Santa Elena,
where silt and sand, sifted by time,
ascend as the wall of this canyon.

The mesquite lays low,
in bosques that wave whimsy in arid air.
Lacy shadows envelop the path that leads
to the great unknowns of the Rio Grande.

It offers leafy relief, an unexpected arbor,
though inch by inch it has sucked at dryness,
balling down a great tap root
knurlier than its gnarly, stump trunk.

The mesquite feeds patiently, through feelers
that have forsaken the surface
of this earth, knuckling down blindly
to draw up the wetness below.

It fastens mutely,
musters water where it can
spreads and spreads like rain,
long after the rain has gone.

Joy Palmer
Austin, Texas


The Discreet Moon

She was too old to make babies
but still her husband
insisted that she prepare the New Year
peas for their evening meal. Later
her chopsticks selected a few soft beans
and placed them in a tiny
plastic pouch. After the moon
had hidden its face behind a cloud
she slipped out to the garden. At
the base of a huge stone her trowel
began to dig a modest hole. When
metal touched metal she stopped and
reached into the sleeve of her kimono
to pull forth the plastic pouch and place it
on top of the small brass box. Satisfied
ceremonial hands guided disturbed soil
back into place. The moon moved from behind
its cloud and filled the garden with amber light.

Mary-Agnes Taylor
Austin, Texas