Poetry Gardens of Fame

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Welcome to Garden 1106 in
ARTELLA'S POETRY GARDENS OF FAME!

Click the links below to read the winning poems for November, 2006.

Poetry Gardens of Fame Index

First Place
Second Place
Third Place
Fourth Place

FIRST PLACE WINNER

Mary Anne Potter

Mary Ann Potter is a recently retired English and history teacher who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. After 37 years of classroom and administrative experience, she now has ample time to pursue her interests in hiking, reading, and, of course, writing. She is currently working on a novel that combines both prose and poetry. She and her husband have been married for 39 years; they have one grown son.

Post Script: New Orleans in April
by Mary Anne Potter

Reckoning our way through checkerboard streets, where lines now blur - cemetery, park, and lakeshore indistinct- in humidity of tears,
old inscriptions become hand-lettered alarms, rich ironwork rusts from tracery to scrap,
the museum, with square regularity of rooms, tilts precariously toward us, a peculiar invitation to peer inside
where tiniest spiders display finely-scaled webs over mold-melted lace.
If we narrow our eyes, we may not see you, dear spectators;
If we play music now, we play it only for ourselves.

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SECOND PLACE WINNER

Rumpled Socks
by Celia Sadlou

It was the sort of thing that could try a Mother's patience.
Socks were the daily issue that rattled the morning
till it settled at a lopsided slant.
Just a stray thread tormented my six year old feet.
No sympathy in the room for this matter,
especially none for the eccentricities of a child.

Was it misfired chemistry at an early age, that brought
the teeth on edge, while toiling over creases on socks,
to align precisely across young toes?
Who knows?

It never went the smooth way, un-complicated way,
for this six year old
who longed for un-rumpled white socks.
Not hand-me-downs,
lifeless from wear by older sisters or cousins.
Was that too much to wish for?
Just one small thing to be smooth and even in life.

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THIRD PLACE WINNER

Shape Shifter
by Patricia Boutilier

Darwin was right, of course.
Atom by atom
we morph through time
mutating daily.
Less nymphette, more Cycladic,
the loping runs and gracious twirls
give way
to loosely swinging arms,
nanobursts of wit and mystery.
At night, our bodies cry
with deep aches and coiled tension.
A wide-eyed flower-child
has become
just another grandmother for peace.

FOURTH PLACE WINNER

Suburban Mermaid
by Sarah Stack

Quiet little neighborhood nobody can see me bare
slip into the deep
just meat and blood and bones in there
while everybody sleeps
then dancing in the rain again
quiet little street
nobody can see me here
dancing in the street
moonlight on my naked skin
hiding treasures in the deep
all the while my secret's kept
while everybody sleeps.

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