Here are the matchups for the West Region’s Second Round:
1) Craig Arnold
Why I Skip My High School Reunions
Because the geeks and jocks were set in stone,
I, ground between. Because the girls I ate
lunch with are married now, most out of spite
—because the ones I spurned are still alone.
Because I took up smoking at nineteen, late,
and just now quit—because, since then, I’ve grown
into and out of something they’ve never known.
Because at the play, backstage, on opening night
she conjured out of the vast yards of her dress
an avocado and a razorblade,
slit the one open with the other, flayed
the pebbled skin, and offered me a slice
—because I thought that one day I’d say yes,
and I was wrong, and I am still afraid.
versus
8) Ellen Bass
Eating the Bones
The women in my family
strip the succulent
flesh from broiled chicken,
scrape the drumstick clean;
bite off the cartilage chew the gristle,
crush the porous swellings
at the ends of each slender baton.
With strong molars
they split the tibia, sucking out
the dense marrow.
They use up love, they swallow
every dark grain,
so at the end there’s nothing left,
a scant pile of splinters
on the empty white plate.
4) F. A. Nettlebeck
REDLINING THE FOSSIL
Three million
different varieties
of seeds from
around the world
are locked away in a
doomsday vault and
you don’t have the key.
versus
5) Wanda Coleman
Bedtime Stories
bed calls. i sit in the dark in the living room
trying to ignore them
in the morning, especially Sunday mornings
it will not let me up. you must sleep
longer, it says
facing south
the bed makes me lay heavenward on my back
while i prefer a westerly fetal position
facing the wall
the bed sucks me sideways into it when i
sit down on it to put on my shoes. this
persistence on its part forces me to dress in
the bathroom where things are less subversive
the bed lumps up in anger springs popping out to
scratch my dusky thighs
my little office sits in the alcove adjacent to
the bed. it makes strange little sighs
which distract me from my work
sadistically i pull back the covers
put my typewriter on the sheet and turn it on
the bed complains that i’m difficult duty
its slats are collapsing. it bitches when i
blanket it with books and papers. it tells me
it’s made for blood and bone
lately spiders ants and roaches
have invaded it searching for food
3) William Michealian
The Teacher
At night he dreams
of cracking their heads
like walnuts.
The sturdy table
in his work room
is covered with shells.
By morning
the dusty wooden floor
is littered with eyes.
After breakfast,
he sweeps his dreams
into the street.
Mothers and fathers
on their way to work
greet each other outside.
versus
11) William Everson
The Poet is Dead
(excerpt from Everson’s memorial for Robinson Jeffers)
Snow on the headland,
The strangely beautiful
Oblique concurrence,
The strangely beautiful
Setting of death.
The great tongue
Dries in the mouth. I told you.
The voiceless throat
Cools silence. And the sea-granite eyes.
Washed the sibilant waters
That stretched lips kiss peace.
The poet is dead.
Nor will ever again hear the sea lions
Grunt in the kelp at Point Lobos.
7) Judith Skillman
The Business of Murder
It was there, in the room above,
company calling, I learned
that space extends across the lake,
that the gun was just a weapon
like a knife or a smile, and
I could, if they came to my door
and knocked, if even the intimation
of a good morning lingered too long
on the peripheries, I would commit
what for so long had been fodder
for the machinery of news:
nightly stories of families
whose black sheep
turned suddenly lethal.
versus
2) Tamara Thorne
The Haunted Grave
While wandering through the cemetery
On a lovely day in February
I spied a hand a ’thrusting from a grave.
Digits scrabbling in fresh-turned earth
With a dreadful lack of mirth,
An arm pushed finally from the ground
Fingers spidered up the mound
And eventually they found . . .
