A SPLASH OF NAUGATUCK RIVER REVIEW
SOME POEMS FROM THE LAST CONTEST ISSUE

16th Annual Narrative Poetry Contest Winning Poems, judged by Allison Joseph:

First Prize: Judy Kaber

Laundry Work, Newport, 1967
after Edward Hirsch’s “Waste Management”

Wake when summer sun
breathes on you so you can
clatter across sidewalks,
punch the clock, nod
to the other women, clean
and neat, before you enter
the room with clanking machines,
don’t forget your earplugs
or the raucous applause
of metal will haunt you
in your sleep, don’t hesitate
to grab the edge of a sheet
as it leaves the heavy rollers
even if it sears your fingers,
feels like purgatory
in that vaporous air, at
break don’t forget
to laugh at ribald jokes before
you return to another load
among hot flat-work irons,
don’t bother with the sweat
that runs down your face
and don’t forget to take
your salt pill, don’t think
about the ache in your legs,
the pinch of your shoes or
the lure of leaving, forget
the idea of lying on the floor
listening to the music of Zappa,
don’t imagine your paycheck
will cover the cost of a concert
or that you will forget the packed
suitcase under your bed, the way
you feel glad when your lover
leaves for the sea, the plans

you have, the clack of train
wheels, remember what will
happen if you return to this job
day after day, brow full of fret,
skin albino-white, eyes the eyes
of a rabbit waiting for a sullen
shape from the shadows
to move towards you.

Second Prize: Sharon Coleman

passover: candles

this year’s thirtieth rain
greys the seder, my sister

finds the only candles
in our mother’s house.

all morning i drive
in drizzle, then too busy

crushing bitter herbs to snatch
pockets of sunlight. my mother

sleeps best in full sun. finish
the seder plate she creaks

at my sister and i add a bowl
of water less salty than Mom’s tears

that burst every night when
the opera cd ends. i’m afraid

of dying she moans, a quilt up
to her ears. the candles are so tall

tonight we celebrate for hours
and they’re not half-way gone.

no wax runs down their sides.
my nephew has crayoned

a lamb shank on old butcher
paper. nothing gets wasted

in my mother’s house which i
can walk through in the dark

at night, her hospital bed
boats pain how many people

have died in it she moans
every night (it will know

how to receive her, I think
whenever sleep turns

her face motionless)
my nephew’s lamb shank

in a drawer for next year
that may not be for her.

the candles haven’t flickered
all night when my mother

commands me blow them out.
it’s midnight, we’re alone

i blow a long breathe against
what she once taught me

to never do,
i break the law to sleep.

                                                         

Third Prize: Justin Hunt

Roberta

She grew up on our dirt streets,
in the plainness of our prairie.
But wild Swedes had swirled
her genes: gusts of platinum hair,
a constant craving for coffee,
fierce brown eyes that pierced—
desperate, somehow, to be blue.

Now and then she’d sweep
back into town, an exotic wind
out of Minneapolis. She’d spring
my mother from routine, flamingo
our house with her cackle
and iridescence, tell impossible
stories, mound our ashtrays
with smoldering butts
crimson with lipstick—little chars
lying spent beside her carton of Kents—
while Mom hooted and roared.

Years later, when cancer riddled
her stomach, she called my mother.
Will you come up and cook for me, kid?
Between parties and chemo,
a final play at the Guthrie, they blew
out of the house each day, plowed
the cold March air to Dayton’s,
returned the shoes, dresses and furs
she’d bought just a week before.

You’ll come back, won’t you, kid?
she asked their last morning.
As Mom’s taxi pulled away, Roberta
stood on her porch in the dawn light,
shrink-wrapped in a pink robe,
smiling and waving a twig of wrist,
a blanched hand—mascara
streaking, lips red as the rising sun.