Department of English
Poetry Contest - Spring 2008
The Annual Kean University Poetry Contest
co-sponsored by The Academy of American Poets
The College of Humanities and Social Sciences
and the Department of English
The Poetry Contest Committee - Drs. Richard Katz, Maria Montaperto, Susanna Rich, and Mia Zamora - would like to congratulate the winners and honorable mentions.
First Place: Jane Mayer
PROMISED LAND
My Judische lover and I spoke of the holocaust
as we lay entangled on my red sheets
pulled from our honeying with
his milk still sticky on my breasts,
I traced the grinning skull tattooed on his arm.
We went to Dachau once and saw the ovens
maws still gapping still hungry.
Pink wild flowers grew among the white gravel-
I pressed one in my notebook to say what I could not,
how can I apologize for all these old sins?
Even cremated, my lover will be unclean,
he cannot lie with his people
because he loves a shiksa-
He is stained by the Deutsch blood in my veins
my hands are red as I reach for him
Diversity week in elementary school-
a group of Judische kids shoved me to the ground
they bloodied my nose and called me 'Nazi girl'
I thought of my grandfather fighting for the Allies-
I learned to say 'Austrian' instead of 'Deutsch'
My lover snores lazily next to me
but the inches between us are red
with the blood of six million Juden-
How can I not see those tiled walls
shadowed in his face?
He reaches over, sleepily pulls my back against his chest-
I roll over and bury my face in his neck;
he smells warm, like milk and honey.
Second Place: Kara Gerick
corpse pose
I am in corpse pose,
flat on the ground
arms at forty-five degrees
and this girl,
whose name means
'expert in words
and sacred text',
softly tells me
to be here now,
to unite myself
with my self,
to feel my heart -
but suddenly
I am a half hour ago
in the car,
saying,
'I'm 28 going on 45.'
life going by
so fast,
I cannot breathe.
I cannot feel my heart.
I cannot hear my heart,
the wind from my speed
drowning it out.
and a voice says,
'so what are you going to do about it?'
and all I can do is shrug my shoulders,
come back to the now,
just in time
to hear,
find the balance,
find the balance.
Third Place: Ashley Sgro
Pray For Us
I wish to be a part of the cattle roaming the fields
of Mexico. A large one
that eats nonchalantly, one that can melt
a blade of grass on its tongue, tasting
green from the heat
built-up inside of its mouth.
And as the bats invade
when all I can see is blue and black,
I envy the cattle's magnitude. No
reactions surface as the short-toothed bats prick
their thick-carpeted hides,
tasting the red
and seeing silver
like the kind slapped onto the tractor beyond
the fence in plain sight
where the insects hide.
I,
being one of these insects,
hover
around the steering wheel, stuck
from fright, waiting
for the bats to swallow me.
Seeing the clique of insects
hovering over the hood of the tractor,
I wait.
Seeing the cluster of insects
sleeping below on the cold surface of the worn-out hood,
I wait.
Honorable Mentions
- Sistas of the Sun
by Paula M. Taylor - gaia poem
by Spencer Frohwirth
To see previous years winners and winning poems, click on 2007 or 2006.