Yes, I know I’ve failed spectacularly to provide the results of the 2012 April PAD Challenge in a timely manner. And yes, I realize that I’ve cut the Top 50 list down to a Top 25 list (and an unordered list at that). But I have no excuse to provide–just a promise to do a better job next year.
Okay, so who is the 2012 Poetic Asides Poet Laureate anyway?
Well, I’ve screwed up there too, because, well, how best to say this: There are two Poets Laureate this year. They are De Jackson and Brian Slusher. They are both familiar to me, but the poems they submitted this year seemed to reach new levels of awesomeness from them.
I’ll include a poem from each below, but you should really search their poems out from the April PAD Challenge comments. They wrote several great poems.
Speaking of that Top 25 list…
Yes, this year, I’ve decided to make a Top 25 list not because the quality or quantity slipped, but because I wanted to finally finish the judging. These 25 poems were selected from submissions of more than 750 poems from nearly 200 poets. If you work out the math, these poems represent the top 3% of what was submitted (and, of course, there were probably another 2,000+ poems written during the month). So making this list is a big deal (even if it is in no specific order).
Here is the Top 25 list in no specific order:
- Castaways, by Brian Slusher
- Freshman Biology, by De Jackson
- Seeds, by Joseph Harker
- A Sparrow’s Love, by Jane Beal
- Let’s Drive Until Our Asses Melt Into the Car Seats, by Daniel Ari
- What You Left, by Laurie Kolp
- Firebird, by Taylor Graham
- At Last, by Andrew Kreider
- Kill Your Television, by Brian Slusher
- The Trick of Losing What You Did Not Have, by De Jackson
- Cecily, by Marilyn Braendeholm
- Floater, by Pamela Taylor
- Fading, by Bruce Niedt
- An Apple Tree and Two Finches, by Jane Beal
- What I Look for in a Man, by Joseph Harker
- A Shady Kyrielle, by Cristina Ortega Phillips
- Plum Crazy, by Patricia A. Hawkenson
- Baked Alaska, by Jane Shlensky
- 100% Poetry, by Sara Ramsdell
- O, Let’s Not, by De Jackson
- The Dead Birds of America, With Life-Size Hand-Colored Illustrations, by Brian Slusher
- Saltfish Fritters, by Maxie Steer
- Morning Rendezvous, by Lorraine Baron Caramanna
- Let’s Drive North, by Linda Wastila-Simoni
- Something Wild and Wonderful, by Khara House
Congratulations to everyone in the Top 25! And thank you to everyone who participated (and waited so patiently for me)! It still amazes me how everyone comes together to break lines every April.
*****
As promised, here are those poems from Brian and De:
Castaways, by Brian Slusher
The girls from next door
washed ashore in my backyard
now gather dandelions and clover
to cook in a cracked flowerpot.
They build a shelter from the pile
of bricks from an abandoned project,
carefully stack uneven walls with
tree-branch beams and moss ceiling.
On their island, two marooned girls
watch for ships on the fence-horizon,
as cloud shadows sail the grass
and time (almost) forgets to pass.
Freshman Biology, by De Jackson
I remember feeling sorry
for the slimy little suckers
as we sliced them open,
identifying organs: lungs,
stomach, liver,
heart;
scraping cell samples
from each onto glass
slides
identifying
comparing
contrasting
taking notes.
Mr. G jabbering on
kingdom, phylum,
class, order, family, genus,
species,
atrium
ventricle.
The way your hair
curled just right over
your collar as your
brown
(dominant)
eyes conducted
lab experiments
of their own.
You,
moving up to
advanced anatomy.
Me
with scalpel in hand
wanting only
to flay my own heart.
*****
If anyone in the Top 25 wishes to share their poem in the comments (the comments that once again work on the first try), please go for it. I look forward to sharing the November results on time and having the best April Challenge yet in a little more than 4 months from now.
*****
Follow me on Twitter @robertleebrewer
*****
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Anxiously awaiting April – I wanted to be sure I could log in and comment – I made time to visit the blog today. Wow! I discovered I have a poem on the Top 25 List!!! What an honor!!!
Thank you, Robert, for providing this space to poem. Congratulations to all poets. WRITE ON!!
April 23, 2012 at 9:41 pm
Morning Rendezvous
Meet me in the morning
on the first Monday in May,
wear your Sunday suit
and I’ll wear that dress.
Meet me on that morning
at our favorite restaurant
rain or shine, we’ll sit outside
in the rooftop garden
at a table amid the lilacs
the color of my dress.
Meet me on the first Monday in May
early morning
before the city awakes,
we’ll drink a toast to the new day
with orange juice champagne
in rose colored glasses.
Meet me on the first Monday in May,
don’t be late.
Wear your Sunday suit,
I’ll wear that dress,
we’ll breakfast on bagels with cream cheese
while we plan our next rendezvous
in the morning.
Congratulations to De and Brian, and all the other amazing poets on the list! Well Done Robert !!!!!!!!
Congrats to the extremely talented De and Brian. Well deserved, as are the 25 people on this list.
Happy next year, all!
Big congrats to De Jackson, Brian and the top 25!
Big congrats to De Jackson, Brian and everyone who made the list.
I am not sure on how to enter the poetry competition, so i would type it below. Please comment and suggest.
Let me out of this prison
social network has given enough poison
pictures and videos full of freedom
make me feel, my life is a kingdom
full of kings and queens with some orders
Protection is a slave and I need my space
I cry! But they think its all fake
Life is boring and deadly as hell
that i wish to jump in a well
full of freedom so that I can live once again
When I express they think I am sick
house is where they want me to stick
they think I just wanna fly
but let me out give it a try
Don’t make me cry
otherwise I’ll wanna die
I cry, I cry but u see the protection not the distance we got or my bye bye
but still I love u even if I swallow my tears and smile as I see you approach by
I only first got here in October, so I missed last April. but now I can get caught up! And there were so many names in that top 25 that I recognized from our Nov PAD endeavors. Quite the inspiring company I keep.
“A bird may love a fish—but where will they live?”
~ Tevia, “Fiddler on the Roof”
A SPARROW’S LOVE
A sparrow looks into the water with one eye—
the other watches her back.
Her name is not Narcissa. No. She sees
her reflection but looks through it
to the beautiful goldfish flashing
beneath the cool, dark pond-water.
His round eyes are amazed by her wings fluttering
above him, free in air he can never breathe—
glinting in the light of the sun setting behind mountains
neither one of them can climb.
She sings and sings to him,
but he does not hear.
She sees herself reflected in his eyes!
She hops and then flies a little—insistent, hopeful.
He leaps for a moment
above the water, brilliant and shining
then falls back down below.
They never touch.
Jane Beal
Sunflower Songs (2012)
Jane, I LOVE this piece. Congratulations on having not one but TWO poems in the Top 25! So well deserved.
Beautiful imagery! Congratulations!
Yay, De and Brian! So happy for you both. Here’s my listed poem. Thanks, Robert!
Baked Alaska
Temperate winds and
warming seas confuse
the whales and polar bears
who think it is summer.
They scan the sea for food
as tourists, in small boats
launched from the mother ship,
snap pictures of themselves
sporting winter tans
and light jackets, glaciers
melting behind them,
blue ice falling, making
waves that give all
aboard a thrilling ride,
only a little dangerous,
and well worth the price.
Tonight the chef serves
a frothy irony for dessert,
a tribute to global warming,
browned meringue blanketing
a slowly melting center
that cannot hold
but for a little
while
longer.
Jane, this line makes me infinitely happy:
“Tonight the chef serves
a frothy irony for dessert”
Congratulations!
Oh my socks!!!
Finally, De! I am blown away and hysterically happy for you!!!!
So well-deserved!!! <3 <3 <3
Brian, congratulations, big time!!!
Congrats to the top 25!!!!
Awesome work! ^^
Thank you so much, Jac. Such an honor. I’m still floored.
De nada, my friend. It’s been a long time coming! <3
Nicely done Robert – perfect choices for Laureates … De Jackson and Brian Slusher …bravo, kudos and congrats and a big hooray to all twenty-five who placed in the top! Well done all!
Thank you so much, Sharon.
Congratulations De and Brian! Beautiful, beautiful poems. Congratulations to all who made the list and all who poemed! Thank you again Robert for this community.
100% Poetry
(a tritina)
by Sara Ramsdell
It won’t be scratched out in a few minutes, only the bare bones
of it will, the heap of clay from which to sculpt. You then take
on the meaty work, subtracting a ribbed word from that line,
adding it to this one. It takes on life somewhere along the line,
a bit of yours, perhaps, but you’re willing to lend skin, bones,
as it grows beneath your hand into something of a give and take–
your soul for its heart. When it’s perfectly formed, you take
a breath and give it up because you’ve reached the end of the line,
and when you read it back to yourself, it resonates in your bones.
You take the bones, line them up, give them breath, bare your soul.
Sara, I love this piece. That last line just hooks my heart.
Congratulations!
Thanks, De!
Robert picked some good ones. This is awesome!
Much appreciated, Jacqueline. Thank you!
Congratulations, De! What a happy birthday present. Congratulations to all of the other fine poets on the list as well.
Thank you, Laura. A fine list, indeed.
Great to see the top 25 poems reprinted here for easy reference. Here’s mine (written as FangO)
LET’S DRIVE UNTIL OUR ASSES MELT INTO THE CAR SEATS
and we got so restless in Tempe, Arizona’s 90-degree midnight
that we decided to go north. We packed sweating. Alice called
to leave a transparent excuse for her employer; I didn’t even
bother. We locked the apartment at 1 a.m. and started up 17
before we could decide we were crazy. The sky started to light,
and we kept on, grunting half-interest into the Grand Canyon.
All day: sweating and driving, stopping to pee, eating roadside
vittles in the car, refueling, sweating and driving. After sunset
we crossed into Alberta as tourists, claiming to have relatives
in Edmonton. In Calgary, we couldn’t go any farther, so we got
the cheapest motel room we could scout and slept there until
late next day. The air was about 72 degrees, which we agreed
was damn near perfect, so we decided to be on vacation. Alice,
bless her, didn’t even squeak about the money, which we both
knew was tighter than we liked it. We were on vacation. We
asked what there was to do, and the hotel clerk said, “Haven’t
you been to Banff,” as if it had been obvious to her that Banff
was why we were here in the first place. We drove there and
got out of the car, falling flat on our backs, staring up at the
ridges and the cool gray-green-white-blue everything. “Maybe
we shouldn’t go back,” I said, and Alice murmured, “Mm-hmm.”
Best. Poem title. Ever.
And “grunting half-interest into the Grand Canyon”…
Such a fun piece, Daniel. Congratulations!
I love this, Daniel. The title, the story. Funny piece.
A big CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! to De and Brian! And congrats to everyone on the big five-and-twenty list
Thank you, Khara. And to you, too.
Your work rocks my world, as you know.
This is fantastic! Congratulations, Brian and De, worthy poets laureate. You’ve both been consistently excellent this year.
And congratulations to all who made the top 25 list. You’re each well deserving as well and figure prominently on my personal top 25.
Good job, Robert. You’ve done it again.
Thank you so much, Claudsy.
OhmyWORD. Wow.
There are no words this morning. I admire Brian’s work, and I’m so honored to share the title with him.
THANK YOU, Robert. And thank you all, for your generous comments and support. Six years ago I was barely writing anything but advertising copy, and lamenting journal entries. Thanks to this amazing place, I am now writing daily, have been lucky enough this past few months to have some published, and have met some of the most astounding, profoundly talented poet friends on the planet.
Blessed, indeed.
Must also say how much this list ROCKS. So many fantastic poets here. Congratulations, ALL!
Congratulations to De and Brian, all on the list!
Look forward to reading all of the winning poems.
Thanks so much, Happy.
Well done to all the Top 25′ers. Here’s my poem that made Robert’s list.
Cecily
He was a raisin of a man,
round, plump, and wrinkled by the sun,
with hands calloused and grooved
from pulling in nets half emptied of fish.
He was endlessly dedicated and in love
with two women: the sea, and young Cecily,
a broadly angled and solemn woman
who kept herself to herself.
Prudent it was, too, as it kept her blood
from running weak as tea
when his fever was a hurricane
and her innocence a heralder’s beacon.
She was dangerous, a rough craggy outcrop
of rocks that begged every straggler
to her bosom, and he was her empty vessel,
tossed about too easily on the swell of her mood.
(c) Misky (M. Braendeholm)
So sweet, the way you put it: “he was her empty vessel, / tossed about too easily on the swell of her mood.”
Misky, this is such a beautifully visual piece, and so tender. Love.
Congratulations!
This is lovely!
De! My girl De! And happy birthday! and Brian, too! Perfect choices, Robert!
Thanks, Misky!
Congratulations to Brian and De! Well deserved! And congrats to the other Top 25ers!
Here’s my poem; it’s in my book-in-progress, What the Wind Says — 40 years of search-dogs:
Firebird
I follow her into the November woods
golden with oak leaves falling.
Her Shepherd-nose lifts
for scents of morning, brown eyes wide
with watching, ears pricked-alert –
my search partner of so many years.
So many lost hikers, old men
who simply walked away, young girls
drowned. A green pool
still holds scent of whoever passed
yesterday, last evening.
Ahead of me she disappears into brush
and deadfall, searching.
I hear her rustling among fading
leaves as she
disappears before me.
Love this, Taylor. You take me there. So vivid. Congratulations!
Warmth in smiles abounds-
well deserved recognition,
poets so near and dear.
Excellent picking Robert and a HUGE nod of gratitude and respect for ALL that you do!!
De!!!!! (Doing the happy dance with you DE!!!) Brian!!!! Yes!! So excited for you both!!
Top 25!!! Awesomeness!!!
Congratulations to each and every one of you ALL!!
For the named and unnamed this poetic home and endeavor is such a special thing. Kudos to everyone for writing everyday in April!!
Thank you so much, my poetic soul sister.
You’re SO welcome poetic soul sis!!! <3
EXCITED is an understatement! Congrats to ALL on the list. Here is my Top 25 entry:
Plum Crazy
William Carlos Williams
was lucky.
He had a forgiving partner
who was able to imagine
the delicious, sweet
and so cold plums
and settle for flakes
that probably weren’t so
forgiving
and quickly limped
into a soggy mess.
And even though
his apology was so
cleverly written that it is still
read and reread
long after iceboxes
have turned into Frigidaire’s,
I would have smacked him
with a frozen leg of lamb.
Forgive me,
I am so cold.
LOL! I love this and the poem you’re referring to. Spot on reply!
Thank you!
This is referring to William Carlos Williams’ poem: This is Just to Say.
It is also alluding to Roald Dahl’s short story: Lamb to the Slaughter.
Patricia, your title ROCKS, and the poem is awesome. And then that last line. Seriously wonderful. Congratulations!
I had to go back and read his original poem and this is one awesome rebuttal. It gave me a chuckle. ^^
A HUGE congratulations to Brian Slusher and De Jackson. I agree–De’s poems blew me away this year. And although I was not familiar with Brian’s work from prior years, his stuff this year–wow. Both well-deserved–where your crowns well!
Thank you Robert for hosting this event every year. April is my favorite month, my month to indulge in poeming with all the wonderful folks here.
My poem, as written in April. Happy holidays, however you celebrate them. See you in 2013! Peace, Linda
Let’s drive north
past the exit ramp
that returns us
to the formstone
bungalow all shady
with pin oak and diapers
soiled plates and
the neighbor’s
son dealing dope
on the corner
of Church and School.
Let’s drive past
the ramshackle five
and dime now
a dollar general
and the Purina plant
where horses burn
to chow and glue
and hope exits
at the five
o-clock whistle.
Let’s drive north
where air moves
dustless, stars
break through
god’s detritus
let’s drive until
the asphalt peters
out the sun kisses
the ocean green
and baptizes us.
Love this piece, Linda. That last line is just fantastic.
Congratulations, and thank you so much for your kind words.
Thank you De! And a huge congratulations again to you! Peace…
Linda, this is absolutely breathtaking. I love how you weave the hard truth of the world with the hope that rides along with it. Gorgeous! Congratulations for making the top 25!
And congratulations to all the rest, and thank you all so much for sharing your wonerful work with us!
Thank you Deanna! Peace…
I have been WAITING to see these. Congratulations everyone, and thanks for sharing your poems again!
Thanks so much, Sonja.
I’m so happy for De and Brian! Congratulations to them… and the top 25, too. Thanks, Robert.
Here’s my poem:
What You Left
by Laurie Kolp
I found your old journal hanging
in the branches of our shady oak
where you once took refuge
with worn pages scribbled upon
words undecipherable
their meanings misunderstood
like you.
Congratulations, Laurie! This piece is so visual, and powerful. Love it.
Brian Slusher and De Jackson!!! So happy for you both – reading the two poems above reminded me again of how much I love your work. Well done to all who participated in this year’s challenge – and thanks to Robert for sifting through so much outstanding work. But most of all, Hail to the Laureates!
Thank you, Andrew.
And congratulations to you, too! 
OH.
MY.
WORD.
Brian, I love your work and am SO happy for you!
But DE JACKSON?! MYYYYY De Jackson??? My all-time favorite poet of all time and beyond?? WOW, WOW, WOW!!
Excellent Top 25 list, Robert. I hope they really do all post their winning poems here. Congratulations all!
Thank you, Marie. Too bad you don’t ever wear your heart on your sleeve.
Your support means so much to me. Thank you.
Once again, I’m proud to be in such good company. Here’s my winning poem:
Fading
by Bruce W Niedt
I remember the day I knew my grandmother’s
mind was going, when she poured hot coffee
over the tea bag in my cup.
I remember the day my uncle went out for milk, then
called his wife ten hours later from two hundred miles away,
saying he didn’t know where he was.
I remember my father-in-law, dazed in his chair,
suddenly unable to tell me my name,
or his own, or what day it was.
I remember less these days too, little gaps
and tip-of-the-tongue moments more frequent:
where I put my glasses just a minute ago,
the name of a favorite actor,
whether I took my morning pills.
When we stop remembering, do we fade away?
Such a profound piece, Bruce. Congratulations!
Excellent picks, Robert, and worth the wait. Congrats, De and Brian!
Thank you, Bruce.
Oh, yeah! De Miller Jackson! Woo!
And Brian Slusher too!
Wonderful laureates. I have such a smile on my face.
And nice to be on the list, too, with one of my favorite titles
DA
Thanks, Daniel.