Out Loud Poems of the Month

Congratulations to Dick Stahl and Sheri Grutz! We had another tie!
Their poems "River Maker" and "You Used to Love Me" won the Poem of the Year for 2009!
Read their poems below:
 

Out Loud Poem of the Year 2009
Dick Stahl

River Maker
 
                            The Mississippi is a trickle
                            compared to the gushing water when
                            the glaciers melted 10,000 years ago.
 
                            a sign on The Great River Road
 
 
 
The Mississippi Valley wrote its name
in gorging water after the glaciers
melted, and roaring torrents sliced through
the steep grade southward
for 2,000 miles. 
 
O to stand on the shore of this whooshing rush
of creation, this first
liquid glacier
warmed a few earth degrees moving
like a stampede of charging primordial beasts
eager for the sea. 
 
Even dipping one hand
into this cold, sweeping wash sucked
you down headfirst
into the ferocious current,
the dark undertow.
down to the bedrock, scoured smooth
for a quick drowning. 
 
White caps slapped their own applause
over this vast rapture
of surging water, the great River Maker marking
a swift valley, steep graded,
gouging at will, shorelines pulling wider apart
like one day's long summer horizons. 
 
This is power.  This is Nature's spectacular,
and no one standing to feel the bones
rattle, the eyes bulge, the heart leap out
of itself, the feet slide, the imagination send out
 
millions of current ideas
that only one river could contain,
 
The Mississippi. 
 
                               

Out Loud Poem of the Year 2009
You used to love me
By Sheri Grutz

All this used to be a dance,
all this used to be a field,
where you brought out the best in me
 like a patch of flowers,
this winning streak,
and now,
all the people are closed inside buildings inside my mind,
and they grow nothing but quiet over my developed body with a locked heart,
they wonder as I wonder, America,
how to tame this wilderness and still grow something beautiful
 in the vacant part of my eyes, that is where you will find your wish.

Poem of the Month (May 2010)

"Tango"
By John McBride

Crimson to black lipstick,

hairdo to outdo, molding

confinement of sheath

with slit down the side,

we come to this tough non-kissin' cousin

to the imperial waltz

for which there is no apology

and no forgiveness.

When they face each other

they see nothing;

to touch is to grapple,

and to ignore.

Let other dancing mime,

here is inflammation of body and soul,

this smoldering twist and turn

called "tango"

with all your sex on the line,

a dance with no chance

for your red hot V's to combine,

a dance you cannot turn to or from,

a dance you will dance to the end.

And there is good reason.

In Buenos Aires every Thursday at noon

they demonstrate, the mothers

of the Disappeared,

but none of the Disappeared

have ever returned.

Closed is the farrago of their lives,

they who are led

noiselessly to the floor

with their scrap of sex and information,

to face the music,

twist, turn, be waiting,

who know nothing, hear nothing, see nothing

but the dark unanswerable

tango.