Poem by Festival Poet Jonathan Skinner

Thousands of Eyes Catch the Light
Through Your Open Door

mascots of the bizarre
cosmopolitan cannibals
foot & stomach in one
gastropods designed
to eat what they cover
in pedal waves rasping
the low hung green
they move the whole world
through their muscular
and glistening flanks
each day, leaving trails
of absorbent signs
to weave a manifesto
in slow and close biting
contact, where lovers
eat many penises
in a climate controlled
by viscous discharges
and fattening on the vapor
sinking above the land
from Mesozoic Asia to
just past the Holocene
their stalks tipped with ovals
and wet curb feelers are
in touch with the human

First Prize Poem in the 2009 Belfast Poetry Festival Postmark Contest!

Industrial remains

Judy Kaber

Beneath the shadow of the new bridge where the Passagassawakeag

rides salt into the sea, a counterpane of mud covers the bones

of ten thousand chickens. Wings, thighs, legs, feet scattered

in layers among mussel shells and glistening clams. They whisper

of past lives, spread rumors of how it used to be. One skeleton,

oddly whole except for the head, remembers another life --

lying limp and full of feathers, riding a conveyor belt,

fingered by calloused hands -- and writes the story in odd runes

sculpted from claw fragments left by the moving tides.

Don’t believe it, a darting alewife cries. It’s all lies.

But the bird continues the backward tale unperturbed. Carving

a saga recalled of the slats of a crate, the careening predawn ride

through the streets, feathers gilding lawns, beaks drawn

and screeching, bumps, and brakes, and breezes from the sea.

Crazy, skinless fowl, hawks a diving herring gull.

But the beakless bard continues. Back into the chicken barn,

windowless, squinting in the hard electric light, warm

in the company of hundreds, fed, watered, watched,

hearing the tread of booted human feet, smelling the sharp

odor of acrid droppings, feeling the bite of wire against wings.

Fishing lines drop from above, even the nightcrawlers

snicker. But the bones press on, to write this legacy.

Back to the time beneath a mother’s breast, the warmth

of down, the hopeful cheep, the drying and quick pull

of air into lungs. Back again, back and back,

into the egg, the dark round beginning, the echoing sea,

fine pulsing red lines, food raw and golden, birth sounds

beating in waves, membranes of comfort, movements

like small comets, kicking thick, liquid sky.

poem by Festival Poet Dave Morrison

Black Crow



Black crow.

Black crow by a white fence.

Black crow by a white fence on Mechanic Street, a Wednesday afternoon near the end of August, the crow so black, so black it looks like someone cut a crow shape out of the day with scissors and the Universe is showing through, made more black by the white bars of the fence and the grass made electric in the blast of the slanting sun, black crow stands absolutely still by the side of the road, pickup goes by, scooter goes by, Buick losing paint goes by, black crow is searching while trying to appear nonchalant, disdainful even, anything but desperate while his belly grinds on itself, there must be something by the side of the road, car-jetsam, animal or bird or bug too slow to cross, there must be something to justify crow's obsessive curiosity – crow doesn't like the traffic but will abide it, and uneasy truce – the traffic gives him squirrels and cats and possums and stupid birds, and gristle and bun and milkshake, but in his crow heart he doesn't want to be on Mechanic Street, but by the water, riding a thermal like a hawk, or even diving like a crazy osprey, or standing on the top of a tall mast in the sun like a carved God.

Could crow keep his balance on top of the mast under full sail? That would be glorious, feeling as if he were dragging the great wooden fish beneath him, until the land fell away and the ship was the only solid thing and he was at its highest point, shiny black King in the belly of a cloud, obsidian star, carved coal angel, heaven above, earth below.



Black crow.

Black crow by a white fence.

Black crow by a white fence on Mechanic Street, hungry, dreaming.

Poem by Belfast Poet Laureate and Committee Member Linda Buckmaster

Webcam Osprey

“Osprey has laid an egg!”

Electronic marquee outside a restaurant

Is there no dignity left? Bad enough they

have watched me all winter: hunkering down

in the cold and wind, surveying my flat stretch

of tidewater where I know the rhythms of each run, building

the nest for our family. (How lucky the camera can’t follow the flight

of love, the moment we seal our future.) And now, just

in time for tourist season, my body unwittingly becomes

a performer while they sit at the bar

or table, even those without a water view, waiting

for their lobster, the staff laconic in the slow

early spring season and all watching

my sacred offering, an event

they can talk about

on their cell phones or perhaps even

send a picture of the picture on the screen

above the decorator fishing net.

And when the little one finally breaks

through to this world, a moment that should be

ours, only ours, how will I explain the world

he is breaking into? How can I tell him -- free-born spirit expecting

his birthright -- that he is already captured?

(Previously published in Off the Coast.)

Poem by Festival Poet Ellen Goldsmith

AWAY

Crows caw, the rumble

of a plane overhead,

bird sound and bee buzz.

I came here to read,

uninterrupted by phone,

dusty tables, unmade beds.

There is nothing I need

to do for the cove. I can

leave the grasses as they are.

The water comes and goes.

The wind makes its own decisions.

published in Wolf Moon Journal, Fall 2009

Poem by Committee Member Nancy Carey

Late Thoughts on

an August Afternoon

　

I don’t want to fall

down the steps

to the sea

where the bleached

bones

of the sailors lie

beyond all touch.

I want to ride

the school of fish

buried in the swell

watch a crab crawl

from a water cave

feel barnacled pebbles

that shift my feet

and algae bloom

on pimpled rocks.

I want to find

the teal blue ocean-glass

sea-blown onto sand

jagged edges smoothed

by salt wave weather tide.

And if aging beauties

hold the treasured necklace

to their throats

on this spit of land

under the newborn sun

seaweed woven

in their dying hair

they simply want to dream

of rage and time

before the bony

sailors come.

Poem by Festival Poet Lauren Murray

Rant for the Sad Old Chairs


A chair sticks around the house awhile,
takes its space,
runs the household if you let it.

I have burned a few chairs on a cold day,
chairs I especially hated.
Just to get them off my mind.

I like to set ugly ones at the end of the driveway
for people to take away for free—
oh they do.
I have a few good candidates piling up.
That horrible green one on wheels from Bela
(he’s off in Montreal).
The one whose bottom sags
that Jim’s grandfather sat in—
cats threw up on that cushion too many times.

The busted cane rocker...that will burn nicely.

It’s a vendetta of some kind.
I’m just waiting for Grandma’s brocade
to act up and out it goes.

I’m not fond of chairs.