Friday, September 10, 2010

Winning Poem: Stephanie Kranes

We are happy to present the Grand Prize Winner's poem of 2010's January 1st through April 30th contest.

Kinesthetic

there is no eye contact here
we look away
passing each other by granite countertops
and grandfather clocks
the back of her bleached head
is part of the picture i have of each room
when my mother made me
she was overjoyed to find that my hair was as red
as the tomato juice she'd craved for nine swollen months
i fix it when i know i'll see her
because i think it will make it better
than if i let it splay and fall, unruly
like the time she made me pee
yellow rain
down my pajamas against the kitchen
wall
on a family vacation to a cerulean place
we toured a restored slave master's palace
the color of southern baptist wedding cake
a rusted garden hoe the length of a Klondike's back
lay abandoned on the front lawn
as if a child had just left his toy to his mother's call for dinner
i feel the food in me rise now
"it's so beautiful here," she'd said
and i knew then
our eyes were as different as our hair

1 comment:

  1. Now this is a great poem, indeed a masterpiece... she should be commended and encouraged to write. Moreover one gets the sense of a true humility in her work... I like it...

    ReplyDelete