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

17th Annual Narrative Poetry Contest Winning Poems, judged by Octavio Quintanilla:

First Prize: Mary Beth Hines                                                                               

Fall						

Last yellow leaves flit
through shadows as I drive home
alone through the Berkshires.

Little omens, I think then ominous,
flare, brink rousing the hairs
on my neck, my dead: father,

mother, and last week, Ella,
my friend, a month after we climbed
the stadium steps in our Patriots gear.

Her first game, final tick off her bucket
list. At the top, she asked me to snap
a photo for her kids. And now she lives

on my phone, her smile and glorious,
splurged-for, honey-brown wig, manicured
hands holding up her freshly penned sign:

“The Luck Stops Here.”
And, today, bearing into hairpin turns,
dizzied by the lit leaves, vertigo

of absence, I recall that first
gut-punch take-down of a beloved—
childhood pet canary Chirpsy

who sang his tiny heart out
balanced on my thumb while I,
ever off key, warbled along.

My father buried him in the not-yet frozen
yard, and I fully expected him
to break through, wings flashing

like the summer fireflies released
from my jar. I expected him
to return the way Lazarus did,
or Jesus himself, and why not?

I was a true believer.
And even now,
after a lifetime of losses,
each fresh one dangles
a possibility, augury,

every October offering
this promenade of falling
leaf-blade faces—riddled, aglow.

Second Prize: E.R. Lutken

Massacre at Hard Times Landing

Polyodon spathula
Mississippi, memory’s river – gift
and curse – rolling through the heart
of the South. Over the levee that
gray morning, a dull aftermath
of slaughter carved into our minds –
decapitated heads of huge spoonbill
catfish scattered in a vast flooded forest
of cypress knees whose scrawny arms
reached up from placid backwater pools’
ooze, brandishing their knobby fists.

Heavy smell of rot, drone of flies
surrounded the fish’s withered eyes
that stared, confused, at a foreign sky.
Their gaping mouths’ massive profiles
a grim magnificence of paddle-blades
like canted flags – jaws frozen in groans
of despond – sprawling stale remains akin
to glass plate images of civil war dead,
with no survivors left to wail or moan –
a harbinger of nature’s quiet ruin.

Shy relic species that traced
lazy patterns in the muddy river
for eons – survived threatening chase
of piscivorous dinosaurs, silver
slice of eusuchian teeth, pteranodon claws –
now casually, savagely destroyed
by taste for tender roe bursting on fine
palates with the powerful sweet flavor
of cash. For the fish – an orphic choice –
another river’s curse or gift of oblivion.
 

                                                         

Third Prize: B.J. Buckley

Agnes						

If you're old and live far out away
from the other homesteads, most
abandoned, or leased to strangers, old
woman with no one left, husband long
buried, hired man hurt by a nasty ram
and hauled in the bed of the rusted
pickup down the 11 miles to the mailbox,
only the tax notice anymore, so
the postman can get him into town
before he expires, hag no one sees
except for supply runs twice a year,
or the brand inspector or idiot tourists,
pruned and bent and ancient forever,
who no one alive remembers young,
immortal old, always ready, canteen
in one hand and gun in the other,
every rare time a strange new truck
sends up a dust plume, slows, stops —
if you're relict, of another history,
and something happens in early
summer, it's July, August, till anyone
knows, dead lambs around the dry
water trough, stock dog long gone,
his fur pressed to warm your fallen
body, he'd never leave you, head
tucked into that saggy breast, your
arthritic fingers forever caressing
his elegant muzzle, his piebald
crooked soft sweet ear.