2008 2-Day Contest Longlist

Alicia Tumchewics
Burnt Sienna

My sister and I are colouring by the fire
Beautiful wax crayon ladies dance
across my page
my sister crouches over her paper
crayons clutched like a rattle
I want the brown one to draw some hair
Burnt sienna, I can read the label;
she can’t

she clings to the crayons like extra fingers
Her ladies look like bugs;
yellow antennae, purple thorax branching
into green feet that look like roots
I grab the colours from her fist
She twists and tosses the crayons free
onto the fireplace

Hot wax springs into flame
spurting toward wool mittens, socks,
a dry newspaper article

My father leaps up angry
as the fire  Light catches his leather belt,
its broad, brass buckle
Get back! he shouts and lunges
to wrench the fire extinguisher from the wall

My sister and I gasp,
cower toward our mother, the usual vessel of mercy
But she stands still, hand across her lips, eyes nervous
proof enough that this is real,
the spanking truth
that this little fight could burn the whole cabin down

Uncle beats the flames back
snuffs them down to black scars pooled on the fireplace
a cinder falls to the carpet, a hot filament of flame
glows then crumbles into snowflakes

In the cooler shadows I try
to finish the picture
but I can no longer have a pretty lady with sienna hair,
the only colour left is orange;
the colour of fire

Andrea Johnstone
The Italian Boy

Our vessel, Hound of Fortune, clipped southwest
with a bone in her teeth – a foaming bow wave,
bound for the New World, laden with ballast.

Two days past Gibraltar a stowaway was collared:
a rickety boy stealing ship’s biscuits.
Cook gave him a thrashing, made his teeth rattle.

Captain would have thrown him to the sea – the boy so puny
he’d be hard-pressed to sink – but I piped up that I could use a prentice.
“Then he’ll share your rations, Bosun. Make sure he earns them.”

Deft of finger and of mind, my clever pet learned quickly
every hitch and bend, how to mouse a hook and serve a splice,
singing all the while in his charming voice, his strange Italian tongue.

One day, on my watch below, he fetched me up to see a wonder:  
a dragonfly, blown willy-nilly to our ship, mid-ocean... only to receive,
instead of respite, a sharp pin through the thorax courtesy of

Mr. Mills, our passenger, who fancied himself an artist,
who daily watched – and sketched – the boy about his work.
I knew his hope:  to catch the fluid light of that young face.

Mr. Mills, with his pigments:  ochre, umber, sienna, raw and burnt:
colours from the very earth, and proof of its existence. At sea, with shifting
water all around, the fact of land becomes an article of faith.

In glassy doldrums two weeks and more, the crew grown nervous as cats,
the Italian boy skylarks in the rigging, a filament of pure and joyous energy.
“Mr. Mills!” Why should the mate now call to Mr. Mills, and not to me?

“Control that boy or I will!” – meaning to go after him
with a length of rope or the buckle end of his belt.
Strange how something, out of nowhere, can wrench one’s heart.

Mr. Mills begins to flaunt his chiaroscuro, his sfumato, his
portraits of the boy asleep. Among the crew, the superstitious
start to whistle for a breeze that never rises.

The windless days and nights go on. We drift in purgatory
blistered by the sun of hell. Short rations. No more singing.
Sailors eye the boy askance and mutter “Jonah.”

Could this flighty lad indeed have brought bad fortune
when he lit upon our ship? Could the gods of wind and sea
withhold their favour on account of one small Italian boy?

When the water’s black and stung with stars I peer down hard for
any answer from the floating sargasso, or what lurks beneath.
Nought to be seen but a dark shape in my own image. I go below.

It’s the work of one hand, his neck no bigger than that of a gull,
an albatross. One small sacrifice to Neptune, floating face down,
arms outstretched like fragile wings to embrace the ocean.

And Aeolus deigns to open his sack
and a breath of wind ruffles the water
and the Hound of Fortune sets her course
and sails away.

 

Chelsea Novak
Interment

He pulls the cotton blend shirt over his chest—
the last article of clothing he owns not smeared in dirt—
the brass buckle of his belt is even mud encrusted.

Socks slide over calluses thick as a locust’s thorax,
only he is not as hungry, but could
mistake the wrench in his gut for something similar—
the whole of his desire:
a burnt out filament in a cracked glass vessel.

The sienna buried under his fingernails
is proof of hours spent with his hands in the earth,
waving his trowel like an infant with a rattle.
The soil is left saturated with nervous sweat;
his hands alone betray a tremor.

Linda Lee Crossfield
THE GIRL WITH THE BURNT SIENNA PIGTAILS
WAITS FOR COUSINS TO ARRIVE BY TRAIN

A year she’s waited for this day,
a year of letters, the Christmas box,
always something for her birthday.
Today, the girl with the burnt sienna pigtails wakes to no alarm,
each article of clothing carefully chosen,
belt and buckle, colour and cloth considered,
then discarded or embraced,
blue sock becomes a river,
each shoe a vessel she flows into.

She stands between her parents, hops foot to foot,
waits for the train—all chug and rattle and shrieking brakes—to pull in.
Fifteen minutes late, says the station attendant,
been like this all summer; had to wait for freight.
Fifteen minutes more! She thinks she’ll die
of heat, no-see-ums, the hot turmoil that’s her stomach.
The girl with the burnt sienna pigtails gazes down the tracks
until they blur to a single filament of steel and disappear,
string to the train’s bow,
a-hum with the music of its coming,
proof, she thinks, you can talk
over strings held taut between two tin cans
so the person at the other end can hear you.

This is the sort of thing they do,
the girl with the burnt sienna pigtails and the cousin she waits for:
run tin can phones from ground to tree house,
hatch elaborate plans to get cousin’s older brother in trouble,
keep whispering, each to other, long after lights-out.

Finally the train, swaying into sight like a determined June bug,
head, thorax, abdomen of cars judder to a stop
with the sound of a wrench clattering on concrete,
the girl with the burnt sienna pigtails nervous,
then relieved to find her cousin still smaller than she,
tells her their imaginary steeds are saddled and waiting
and they ride on horses made from summer laughter
all the way home.

"But fear of the inexplicable
has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual;"

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Daniela Elza
the snowflake: a case study (of creation

you tell me of       the beginning—

in the heat of the kitchen    we scoop
two tablespoons of wood ash.           whisk them

in water to make sweets. you tell me

how I arrived—                a fractal
landed    on your September windowsill.

you brought me in.                         not a bit nervous
under my childhood gaze you tell me how

I lifted     from forests                    from lakes 
(stirred by the dendrite reflections of trees)

and crystallized    around ancestral dust
to the perfection                of a snowflake.

I watched outside the thick snow      flitting on
my thoughts.        imagined what it took

to wrench myself out of a carapace of  ice—
the coat of arms that gripped  the thorax.

did not buckle       at the inconsistencies—
as your voice carried           its own proof.

*
the rattle of logic  in time cracked my fragile story—
its vessel fissured with doubt:            why snowflake?

why not a seashell?              or            a blade of grass? 
I watched the lattice of my tale                            collapse

an article I slowly shed        as I picked apart
its woven strands:

wait a minute:                     snow in September?
among its shades of raw      to burnt sienna

there is no such white         no place for it to land.

*
one day I follow      the filament                      of time 
stretching back     nine months before:            falling

in the month of January.    which makes more sense
but never settles
my conception:

this crystal memory        (of being               
caught                           wondering
what it felt like                              to be air born.


such knowing is   a loss         I have to mourn

the way a snowflake lands             but only once
among the ashes on our tongues.

Dina Hardy
WANTING THE SPOTLIGHT

I.
Turning his back to the camera,
Sean points toward the ceiling—
eye of the flash, a spotlight.

II.
More picts.—hot filament
from the current through the spotlight.

III.
The spotlight glints off a blonde's belt buckle.
It strikes the retinas of her blue eyes.

IV.
A cellphone and a watch
mark time.
A cellphone, a watch and mugs of rum
mark time.

V.
I can't wrench my lips from your cheek.
The depth of our reflection
in the mirror over my shoulder.
The spotlight—in front of us and behind.

VI.
Windows rattle from the music
and us, dancing for the spotlight,
on top of the sienna carpet
with circles like fake glasses
from a hastily-made disguise.

VII.
Mario wears an auto mechanic's shirt.
Name patch, "Larry," stitched
over his chest. Spotlight on irony.

VIII.
In the corner, Andy, haloed
by the spotlight and 70-proof spiced rum,
checks out the women around him.

IX.
Spotlight shift to Dara, folded,
flexible, like a caterpillar, tail
to thorax, in preparation
for metamorphosis.

X.
The threat of the spotlight
makes me nervous. I raise my hand
in front of the lens.

XI.
Conversation in the doorframe:
"He sold me the paining for the five dollars."
The article the in front of all the nouns.

XII.
The vessel of rum trickles to empty.
The flash battery, fading.

XIII.
It was hello through the goodbyes.
We were together
and we were going to be together.
The spotlight became a welcoming street lamp
in the morning of the night.

Colin Smith
Note

Proof you're alive is this line
in the sand infused with tpyos
insolent with soldiers. Raw
sienna moon. A breakfast orange
toast coffee paper. Another article
tries to spin a burnt rattle
to ideological advantage. Memory
that underfed filament
now beginning to stretch and gap.
What the where the. Why
is foregone
forlorn. Why
be this insular. Wrench yourself
into new paradigm, walk its seams.
Mother yourself into thoughtfulness.
Be comfortable with wrath.
Be not the vessel but
the sabotage. No resignation no
signature. Buckle erotically
at some party. Raw
sundog. Your heart
is in your thorax, stick insect
nervous to be anywhere. It's
time to fly, only yesterday.

ellen jaffe

Memory Proof:  Notes from a Small Room

One, two, buckle my shoe

I wanted to be Bobby Shaftoe,
sailing away to sea, silver
buckle on my knee,
silver rings on all my fingers,
in a vessel of gold and ivory
cutting through storm-tossed waves
laced with filaments of moonlight.
No one told me girls couldn’t be sailors

Proof  I exist: nervous rattle in my thorax,
wrench of pain jabbing my gut,
drumming of my heart.
Nothing is silent, even in this small room

Burnt Sienna, Prussian Blue, Magenta, Nile Green, .
sixty-four colours, neatly boxed, waiting for paper –
my heart’s desire.
I didn’t know until later that Sienna was a city in Italy,
Prussian was also an empire, the Nile a river in Egypt.
I drew cinnamon-coloured ships, midnight skies,
princesses locked in rose-covered towers, thick with thorns. 
Lying awake in the dark,
I waited for the rattle of the door handle, the sound of a belt buckle
unbuckling

They wanted absolute proof, article by article
(particle by particle, hearticle by hearticle), but I could only give them
40%.  My blood vessels ran with water, then wine,
brandy, whatever was handy.  How
could I prove what didn’t exist, a filament – no, a figment –
of my imagination?   If he said so, it must be true.
What happened to the truth I knew?
Wrench it away, out of sight,
wring it out, squeeze it tight,
think of daytime, not of night.
Sing a song of red and blue.

Nerves, they said, a nervous child
“I’ll give you something to cry about.”

I poked garter snakes to see if they would rattle
(they scuttled away)
and turned myself into an ant:
head, thorax, abdomen,
antennae – alert for danger – and six quick legs.
If I were small enough, and diligent,
I could hide, live safely underground, be
smaller than Alice when she drank the magic potion
(not marked poison), entering wonderland.
No use – he always found me

Three, four, shut the door

Rebecca Ellis
What We Know About Whitman…

How his first newspaper article
we know of, 1838, told of a farmer killed,
a bolt of lightning “attracted
by the tines of his pitchfork.”

How he admired in someone’s prose a “nervous
beauty and classical proportion.”  How he loved
the mechanics, the blacksmiths, the dock yard
workers, the lamplighters, the ferrymen –
their crumpled hats, thin leather belts, unbleached
linen shirts, their brawny chests,
their cheeks burned raw sienna
in the Brooklyn sun. How he
abandoned his government clerk job
days at a time worrying over the proof
of his next book, careful corrections
and writing his own anonymous reviews.

How he spent days walking, or passing
back and forth on the Fulton Street ferry,
or at night, in the shipyard, cradling himself
twisted in the white sail of a quiet vessel.

How he arrived—an old man himself—home
for his mother’s death rattle, his own buckle
and collapse, then, sitting the long night by her coffin
thumping the floor in grief with his walking stick,
unable to wrench any word
(it was so unspeakable) and thumping the floor
all night, the blunt
percussion of grief.

How he posed, in some photographer’s
studio, on his outstretched finger a butterfly—
most likely a small cardboard model
under those studio lights,
its tiny thorax a twisted filament
of fine wire to prop the paper wings
so carefully patterned to look real—
and this is the image he left us,
self-made, self-edited, and a friend
to nature and the world.

Gwynn Scheltema
Anatomy of an Underpainter: oil on flesh

In the faint time of new morning that has always been hers
and his
she sees him step back off the ladder
the huge canvas balanced in his arms
hears the wrench of tendon and muscle
sees his knees buckle
feels time slow for every descending brittle bone
hears the crack on flagstone
the rattle of blood in breath
as colour goes into shadow it does not gain black, but 
loses white ? becomes richer, somber, less pure.
no longer bone and blood, only venous, skeletal and nervous systems
art is eternal; flesh does not endure
paint is proof against death
maroon blood pools in a halo.

She gathers pestle and mortar, oil vessel, palette, brushes, paint pots?
each article layered with veins of living colour
lays earth pigments about him, ochre, umber and sienna
titanium and zinc for white
do not move what inspires you; often its energy derives 
from its landscape
the first dandelion of spring
the last apple on a tree in fall
she bends her head to his thorax, listens
hears the absence of sound and light
let your brush be the filament that gives light to your 
painting
sees the ribcage through his flesh
the unseen provides structure for the seen
in child strokes she traces a cadmium curve of heart
exaggerated colouring is more agreeable than 
absolute
watches the paint ooze slowly down the sternum
strokes him there
daubs a soft umber in the cradle of his clavicle
paint the shadows and they will release the light

luster demands black contrast
iridescence demands gray
luminosity is not achieved with shiny things
but exists only in perception and visual response

Juan Harrow
Look

Ten and tenacious
she thrusts the jar toward my face.
Look
pale aqua glass
a vessel that once held grandmother’s green tomato chow-chow,
dilled beans or apple chutney.
Look
her small hands clamped like a buckle around the base of the quart jar
the lid a band of whitened zinc that grandmother would
wrench off with withered hands
proof of her sufficiency
as she spooned her pickles into carnival glass bowl.
Look
a dragonfly
hear the rattle of its wings inside the glass
opaque sienna wings
as if embroidered from a single filament of yellow silk
silk veil on her Sunday hat
coppery red body as iridescent
as the bowl that held her green tomatoes.

Ninety and nervous
that she would be forced to leave her kitchen,
her canning jars, her tomatoes and her recipes.
Look
dragonfly spins in the jar and
I could push a pin through the shiny thorax and mat it in a velvet box
preserve its fragile beauty as a token
now simply an article to take to school
for show and tell.
Look
great-granddaughter who will never
understand the smell of vinegar and mustard seed
twist the band and open the jar.
Look
how strong it can fly.

Jim Nason
FRONT ROW

You're the five o'clock shadow
arriving at noon, the mid-point
of a hardwood Tuesday.  Significant
thorax of a polished beast, I will not
buckle under your weight, or raise
the lid in search of proof, the cold lip
of his passing.  I will not kiss
the quilted satin, finger
the sienna roof.  Nervous
strength and vigor, I was there
for the revolting illness, the death-note
article - the sigh, the pills and needles,
the welcomed rattle.  I will not
wrench him from your brassy grip,
unearth him from Mount Pleasant's vault.
Weeks and years, hours and days, crusty
string of tears, a blue filament across my eyes.
I will not covet your slow brown bulk.
Take your off-beat crawl, I say.  Serve
your grubby function.  Roll your vessel,
cross the rows, drag your lumber
down the darkened aisle.  Cast your grief
by a row of candles, park your mid-day ghost.

Nicole Pakan
The Memory Keeper

“I don’t know why I still keep them”

she would scurry the length of the hallway,
reach for the attic cord and
with a quick wrench, watch
the slow decent of the collapsible stair.

They always asked to see her buttons
the glass vessel---an antique pickle jar
thick with histories and
the occasional moth.

There would be the slow nervous climb
and marvelling, creaking wood---
proof of age---and small surprises, like

the brittle thorax of a tiny insect,
wing bearing, crumpling underfoot; the
flicker storm then silence---burnt out
bulb and filament underglow, the remaining
incandescence stretched across the room; 

dust spires;

shuffling boxes and brim-filled chests---the
dull rattle of a lack-lustre buckle
against its neighbours, each
tarnished and out of fashion; old

sepia photographs, burnt
sienna smudges bleeding
pigment from aging portraiture.

Article by article,
a collection often seen---the
removing and replacing of
fragile artifacts,

so many memories to wade through
before a single button
could appear.

 

 

Paula Jane Remlinger
On his workbench

Crescent wrench, five-eighths, weight of a sparrow
in my hand. Five months it lies, unobtrusive as an
article. Dust gathers, silken shed of skin, death
drawn magnetically like filings. It leaves a shadow,
proof of time passing, existence confirmed. I can trace
its edges: undisturbed angle and curve, line and outline,
clearer than any photograph of you. Everything here is
unfinished. A ship without a bottle, rigging
hopelessly tangled. The dollhouse door that creaked.
My first bike. Tools shiny as this grief. The casual
wrench promises return at any moment, a bookmark
of where to begin—again. I am empty, a vessel
at sea, lost among frosted tides, waiting
for the timber to buckle, splinter, weave destruction
like thread through my skin. The captain’s daughter
is tied to the mainsail, tears a silver filament scarring
her cheek.

The air is dry as sawdust, no breath to fill
these lungs. Grief is the rattle in my bones, heart
a nervous drummer, rolling tympani, tsunami waves.
I make a fist around metal, bludgeon wood until the breaking
of its skin, fresh green bleeding into scent. I beat out moons—
your initials, mine. Palms ache with the effort. Blue as old
glass, a beetle scrabbles away. Chitinous thorax cracks
like a walnut, the wrench stained sienna, like rust, dried
blood. It fails to satisfy, not cochineal enough. Nothing
ever is.

Sile Englert
THE WAY IN

I.             On The Table

you: helpless softly impaled thorax a dragonfly
quiet on white cold under glass your wings are pinned
frozen dying flight like you’re not afraid

II.             The IV

the filament crawl; silkworm strand
wave and sting of anemone arms at your wrist
rattle of breath evens; nervous awareness fades like
voices under water

III.             Disinfecting

rubber gloves and blue mask cloudless sky
swab this stain dark over your breasts
burnt sienna from the tube and watered down
squeeze

IV.              The Cut

brushstroke scalpel tongue now sharp slit open
in dam-burst  proportion this vessel spilt of wine
pale skin then fat then muscle exposed

V.               The Ribcage

rend this body open wrench milk white bones aside
buckle under these metallic hands and give
in torn paper sounds dried and broken leaves

VI.              Inside Out

this red has too many hues all bulging viscous
but clean so clean sterile every second
forced tears for irrigation white water through plastic veins

VII.            The Sought-After Article

deeply breathing purple hand-held tumour in your chest
proof: its adornment
graffiti
the careless inky scrawl of four small upper case letters

Antonia Clark
the known world

My father named the world,
taught me tungsten and filament,
drew the nervous system 
on the backs of envelopes,
taught me the anatomy of ants 
the properties of pigments.
I repeated after him, in love
with the language that bound us: 
neuron, dendrite, exoskeleton,
thorax, alizarin, sienna,

saw how the word was bodied,
the body borne by the word,
the body of the world expanding
and contracting, a primitive vessel, 
adrift, buoyed by concept 
and connection, even gravity 
a theory in search of proof.

He built it from scratch,
as far as I could tell, solid facts
provisionally fit, hammered 
into shape and nailed in place
for the time being, wonder
the wrench, belief the bolt 
that held it all together—
still the only world I know. 
I claim it, like an article of faith, 
even as the unstable earth, 
all rattle and buckle, 
wobbles beneath my feet.

Ben Murray
room for echo

there is no rattle of
babies in these next
rooms, proof of lives
confined to the nervous
surreptitious glance
of his and her mirrors
biding the hours

what article of faith keeps thigh
and thorax moving
between these rooms of
heartbeaten echo?

the rhythms of 'life goes on'
a rote percussion played
to an empty house

there is unseen a filament
binding room-to-room
me to you, the buckle of
its moveable tongues still
holding on
a soul's intaglio

our one heart's vessel
will soon wrench itself away
from counts to three
and beyond, the earth
that cushions outside
these doors
a rich and fecund
sienna, in a certain light