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1998
Volume 1, Issue 1
Poets in the pond include:
Kevin Clark
Barbara Crooker
Jerry Fong
Mary Carter Ginn
Carole J. Heffley
Colette Inez
Charles James
Lynn Kozma
Katharyn Howd Machan
Adrianne Marcus
Elaine Preston
Frank Van Zant
Reviews
Julia Johnson
Victoria Smith
Interview with
Elaine Preston
by: C.J. Houghtaling
1998 Poetry Contest
Winners
Fixing the Driveway
On a day scraped clean of summer make-up,
we both can see the old base is crumbling.
Boulders knuckle the asphalt skin,
poke their fists through failing tar.
Where the surface gives,
arthritic spread of cracks and lines appear.
Once taut with run of marigolds,
trimmed with bark mulch and stone,
our tidy path now gutters and sprawls,
decays beneath rolls of chickweed turf.
And when we try to strip those mattressings
of fat green weed, there comes a spill
of rice-white eggs, a fall of crumbs
from marriage bed of busy-footed ants.
Oh, it is not beyond repair. But we are more tired now,
not so flexible as we once were. And it has rained
and rained and rained this joint-biting fall.
The skies grow mute and bald of palliating sun.
And there’s been neglect, so much neglect.
Day after day, year after year, another bulge
a new strain, an unexpected roll
from endless gulpings of gravel and stone.
Yes, we’ve fought to hold that line with shovel and pick,
lifted with pry-bar and hoe, stretched and pulled
against failure and break, puffed and railed
against winter growths. But the earth has won
and not a single boulder’s lost a bit of weight.
Dizzy from sweat and coal pitch, we cannot stoop
to tucking road patch into flabby underlay,
or cover up weak-muscled sand
with weave and flourish of dissembling trowels.
Exhausted, we let our progeny scurry and skitter
on clattery shoes, chalk and
lay their white-dotted claims
on the softening body of the drive,
and trundle up the long, bony path, staggering through
the yawning bedroom door to shuck our clothes.
Pulling thick green covers up,
our unwashed bodies sink and twine,
soiling the bed with fresh-turned earth
we wrap ourselves into the cool, winding sheets,
sink and fill with breach and show
of troll’s stone-hearted sleep.
-Jerry Fong
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celebration
we should always plunge through woods,
mayonnaise and onion sandwiches
in our lucky pockets, ears
full of battered tunes of rusty trucks
and braided cries of the whippoorwill
we should have the ocean, its woven quartz
at our feet--& coiled inside the stones,
songs of our only-skin: we should always
be the one who says, look, Dad, no handlebars,
& I’m driving to the show & it’s a double feature
& may we always slip out the back
as the last music leaks from the tent,
us all laced up & wading through
the press of timothy & sea grass
to the big oak branch hanging over the cliff
swinging as far as the rope will take us
-Elaine Preston
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1998 Poetry Conest Winners
1st Place
Losers
by Adrianne Marcus
Adrianne has had over 300 poems published in such publications as The
Atlantic Monthly, Ireland, Paris Review, and The Nation. She
has three books of poetry: The Moon is a Marrying Eye (Red Clay
Press), Faced with Love (Copper Beech Press), and Child Earthquake
Country (New World Press), as well as two chapbooks, Lying, Cheating,
and Stealing (Pteradactyl Press) and Journeys, Destinations
(Small Poetry Press).
2nd Place
The Turn
by Elaine Preston
Elaine is a Professor of English at the Western Campus of Suffolk Community
College in Brentwood, N.Y. Recent awards include first prize in The
Devil's Millhopper 1996 Kudzu Poetry Contest and first runner up in the
1996 Wild Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in ELF, NY Quarterly,
Mississippi Valley Review, Peregrine, and Comstock Review amond
others.
3rd Place
Falling off the Edge of Summer
by Lynn Kozma
Lynn has contributed to several popular anthologies, including When
I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple (Papier-Mache Press), and If
I Had My Life to Live Over I Would Pick More Daisies (Papier-Mache
Press). She is the author of two books of poetry: Phases of the
Moon (Papier-Mache Press) and Catching the Light (Pocahontas
Press). She began writing in midlife after retiring from her career
as a registered nurse and makes her home on the south shore of Long Island.
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