1st prize: $5,000   -   Deadline: August 1st

Troy Jollimore
 
AFTER
 
If we must speak of each other, let it be
in the forms that monarchs and generals use
to refer to their rivals; as if each were known
to the other only through field reports
and classified intelligences. Let it be
in tones of wariness, grudging respect, and,
where permitted, mutual admiration.
Let our campaign be conducted on these terms.
And when people speak of the 'break-up,'
let us hear in that the cold overtones
of the word as applied to a glacier: how,
when the ice began to shudder and crack,
new light found an entry, and the patterns,
evolving each moment, each moment formed
something lovely and fresh--a lens through which
a bright, eerie world not previously known
offered itself to be glimpsed--as the fragments,
the small frozen fragments, mindless and free,
tasting a life more open and salty
than any that they had known, made their way,
their steady, grim way, their cruel, ineluctable way
toward that sea, that vast,
that insensate, that insatiable sea.

--from RATTLE #22 - Winter 2004

Review by David Lee Garrison (email)

A visceral urgency pervades this book. It is about handling dead body parts and imagining yourself as a cadaver, hearing coins jingle in your father's pocket while standing by his grave, using a washing machine as a vibrator, seeking sexual gratification with a vacuum cleaner, making love in the kitchen and hoping the kids will think you are washing dishes. Comic or tragic, every poem in this book hits you hard in the gut.
 
It has three sections. In the first, The Smell of Death, the poet recalls his childhood as the son of a surgeon, his own work in a morgue, and his father's death. The second, The Weight of Desire, starts with a funny poem about budding adolescent sexuality, goes on to bare all in an unflinchingly honest exploration of the human need for love and sex, and ends with a poem about cicadas who wait seventeen years to mate and die "doing what they love." The last section, Moving On, deals with marriage, children, divorce, remarriage, and intimations of mortality.

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