Their Grandmother's Palm (Pantoum for Palestine)
by Carla S. Shick First Place
Children throw rocks to defend the land
soldiers shoot exploding bullets
from the dunes beyond the refugee camps
blood drains into sand filled streets
Soldiers shoot exploding bullets.
Flares in the night reveal decaying bodies
blood drains into sand filled streets
a collection of worn shoes and garbage
Flares in the night reveal decaying bodies
gaping holes in the walls of refugee homes
a collection of worn shoes and garbage
an elderly woman picks through the stones that were her home
Gaping holes in the walls of refugee homes
mothers cook over wood splintered by a bomb
an elderly woman picks through the stones that were her home
a ceiling fan hangs from what is left of a roof
Mothers cook over wood splintered by a bomb
children move between the shadows of tanks and gunfire
a ceiling fan hangs from what is left of a roof
a truck flattened by a tank bursts into flames
Children move between the shadows of tank and gunfire
pick up stones to defend the memory of their ancestral land
a truck flattened by a tank bursts into flames
families are forced to flee or be murdered
Pick up stones to defend the memory of their ancestral land
Their grandmother’s wrinkled palm is a map of their country
families are forced to flee or be murdered
children throw rocks to defend the land.
To the Boy I Remember, The Man I Came to Love
by Allison Thorpe Honorable Mention
Born to country, you understood
the scent of the hunt,
the keen of hatchet and knife,
the wade of trail and stream,
all good qualities for war.
When your number came up,
I wondered if I would ever see you again.
What we had suddenly seemed
insignificant, distant, easily forgotten,
your parting kiss eager and patriotic
and so full of somewhere else.
You came home quiet,
Da Nang, Phnom Penh, Saigon
just names dropped from a reporter’s lips,
muffled memories in an old documentary.
You never talked about what happened—
no leeches, no malaria, no blood—
preferred instead singing to ponds
patriotic with fish,
whispering to children
how to tie knots or name trees,
humming me asleep when the night
swallowed dreams,
cooing to tomtoes and squash
with a satisfied eye skyward,
chanting with owls and winter dusks,
burying black iris in the snow and
praying softly for their return.
A Chance Meeting at the Edge of the Namib Desert
by Lizette M. Tucker Honorable Mention
Did your eyes meet before you killed that boy
tottering around the corner of the horse trough,
reaching after a fly’s iridescent wings,
stopping inches from your crouching frame?
Did your heart break open?
If you had smiled at him,
would he have cried out or been transfixed
by the unusual glint of your sea-colored eyes?
Instead of steel,
could you have pulled from your pocket
the last piece of koeksister
to fill the startled “O” of his little mouth
with sticky sweetness and silence?
Before you left him gurgling his blood,
the smallest of dead silhouettes,
could you have dropped your knife in the fine dust,
traded it for this curious sack
of black plum cheeks and Buddha belly,
carried him on your back through the red dunes and scrub,
running, running for both your lives?
Would he have grown on you?
Would you have come to love him as you do your own boy?
Fed them both from a small pail of maize and honey,
taught them to track suni in the forest,
heard him call out for his brother when neighbors,
bothered by his color, beat him?
Wiped his face, cleaned his wounds,
hoped to replace his father’s image with your own,
hoped that, with time,
he forgave you for leaving the knife behind?
My brother told me how his sniper rifle had felt:
Cold, against the balmy flesh of his right cheek.
The familiar, soft dirt had conformed to his chin
As he shot a single round into the head
Of an enemy soldier, sixty yards away.
I told him about my garden: the war I had waged
with weeds, the break of earth against the rusting spade.
I had sowed the soil with poppy seeds
And had hoped to see sprouts by the spring.
He told me how the juxtaposition of metal and earth
With his trembling body always eased his troubled heart.
How the thought of machines, made of blood
Stripped from the Earth’s iron veins, would be used
To spill men’s blood back onto the earth, and to nourish life.
I told him that nothing ever grew. Spring always came and went
Without a single sprout to give the barren earth
A hint of hope. Soon, the weeds returned and the seeds
Lay dead in the sterile soil where they had been sown.
He explained that my efforts were too gentle and mild,
That I should have ravaged the earth with
Violence. That life only prospers among
Mutilated roots and exterminated pests.
Peace only emerges after a war.
I worried him that the sweat from my brow
Had fed the weeds instead. That my peace could not grow in soil
Already strewn with strife and death. That our mother had forged life
Through nurturing and patience, not gunfire and murder.
Peace must be cultivated in the soil.
Life does not simply swell to fill the place that death has left.