The (SCENE) Metrospace Poetry Contest Winners

(SCENE) Metrospace and City Pulse are pleased to present the winners of the (SCENE) Metrospace Poetry Contest, judged by Stephanie Glazier, assistant director of the Michigan State University Center for Poetry. The first place poem has been published in the December 5th edition of City Pulse. Many thanks to all of the participants! The views below solely represent the creativity and opinions of the writers.

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CARRIE PRESTON: FIRST PLACE

Having given you so little

tonight I want to give you

            all the birches of my childhood,

their sadness.                                      

Take them

as a half moon                                                            

droops low

like an eyelid

brushed with silver shadow.

Take them

            as an apology

                        for my sharpness.

You cannot see your gifts:

the shavings of time

you carve for me,

                                    as easily as you draw curls

with scissors along a ribbon

to decorate a present

so I can finish one more thing

before we go;

            the way your wood-rough hands

                        capable of carrying anything, softened,                                  

                        gathered up my wisps of hair

                                    with a crescent shaped barrette;

           

            the slivers of me you’ve always known,

                        never demanding I be full.

Having given you so little

            I want to hold you                  

the way the birch bark holds its branch

coiling a little at the edges.
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COURTNEY HILDEN: SECOND PLACE

Only Metaphorical Fires Run Without Oxygen

Father would clamp my jaw shut,

and the flammable words inside would

smolder like doused ashes. 

I would sit in my bedroom and pick at my

words, scabs I never let heal.

I’d rearrange the times I could have spoken in my drawers like old

school-children’s footie pajamas.  We were driving through West Virginia or Kentucky,

and at a gas station there was a preacher. 

The fire in Hell is not metaphorical.  It is a real fire. 

When you

are there you will be unable to breathe. 

Thane whispered to me about how wrong the preacher was.  In the car,

Father pulled over and wretched me out of the backseat. 

I grabbed for the seatbelt, but its

woven plastic cut

through my fingers, slipping away.  My father threw me into a mulberry bramble,

and wrapped me in his security blanket.  I got

scorched in the process, the ask marks on

my back the tire

tracks of a car crash that police never investigate.  At the motel

I looked into the mirror.  I

stuck my tongue out at its crack.  It was swollen.  Everything that I ate the rest of that vacation

tasted blue.
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PATRICK KINDIG: THIRD PLACE

fife lake

water has pooled in the bowl of evening

not velvet but onyx

bitten by jagged arrowhead tree teeth

shining hard and watery stars

free and sharp and free again

green apple vodka and goldschlager

mouthed cocktails floating

in darkness apple pie tongues

washed in lake water

and the afterimages of sunburns

never again will this sky star so brightly

before donny and kelsea become don and kels

new enough bending like pine trees

under conversation old as

the love of an awkward puppy

tomorrow there will bass drum headaches and

heaving on the sand but tonight

ice of the moon lukewarm and buoyant

we will sleep half-naked on carpets

rule summer with happy noises
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SUSAN HENSEL: HONORABLE MENTION

Beached

Sea/sky seam

a single sunstruck blue

infinite unending distance

Wind ripples through unexpected wheat

collecting shoots in green waves

rolling to the edge of the cliff

Colliding with the upward flight of gulls

noisy and muscular

diving back to the beach

The crashing breakers

dig tiny crabs from safety

dashing them against the rocks

I do not understand the tides

sweeping sand out to sea

leaving kelp, discarded among the bones.

I only know

I lie salty, sweaty

drenched with the ocean

And you, my little crab,

lie stunned,

beached on my belly.
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CATHARINE BATSIOS: HONORABLE MENTION

Untitled Red Poem

i.

Like the smell of

old books, night-shade sidewalk

red soaked from the bar district;

a color in the back of your mind as you

held your glass and insisted on filling mine,

we are two volumes,

shelved side by side, or

read in mouthed words;

                                half-held on your tongue.

ii.

 “you say ‘oh my god’ a lot during sex.”

He looked at her in the backdrop of walls dingy with cigarettes and water stains,

“I’ve been described with a great many words…”

She picked up her pack from the floor, shook it to find the lighter, opened the box and took her favorite cigarette.

There was red in her nails as she brought the rolled paper to her mouth,

 “…but pious was never one of them.”

iii.

you course with red;

coarse with red from my fingertips,

red from my mouth.

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STEPHEN ANDERS: HONORABLE MENTION

To the Pastor at Easter Service

I sit

on a stuffy brown pew

in your stuffy brown church

watching the girl

in the green floral skirt

as she sways

in the cadence of

your too pious prayers.

She watches you preach

with wide eyes

like cymbals

as you crash toward

your climax about

death and the

doubting of Thomas.

You bid us to rise

for a hymn

but I’m still thinking

of her

and the slip-slide of

skin under fabric.

How amazing her grace

and the sound of her voice

as she is kind enough

not to notice me staring.

As I get up to leave

you beg me remember

the beauty of his

great redemption,

but I think I’ll recall

the supple curves

of her lips

and the shifting

dance of her

careless movements.