The Mystery Box Contest
With this issue we approached the judging of the Mystery Box Contest as a collaborative effort between Poemeleon's readers & editors. We asked that each poem be posted directly to the site, and stated that the winner would be determined by a poll posted at Poemeleon: The Blog. At the closing of the polls, nearly everyone had at least one vote, but one person commented that there were just too many good poems to choose from, so many that it was impossible to choose.
I agree. All of our entries for this, our third Mystery Box Contest, were fantastic. As editors, we found it difficult to make a decision -- and we are accustomed to making decisions like these on a daily basis, so that is no small statement.
That said, we opted to allow our readers' poll to determine the winner, along with several runners-up, and are -- in addition -- posting two others of our favorites as Editors' Choice selections.
We hope you enjoyed reading the contest entries as much as we did. If you would like to view all of them please visit the contest page where you can also view the Mystery Box that inspired these wonderful poems.
With that in mind, the winner is...
First Place (and the box) goes to Linda Lyzenga
Doubt hounded
rustling silk and rushing feet
to the shrine.
Inside, dark and still.
Candles lit...
Surrounded by flickering flames
and questions
caught in the shark's gaping maw.
Petitions like smoke float heavenward.
–Linda Lyzenga
Second Place goes to E.K. Switaj
Samsara Inscribed
outside was just another shell
game & abalone set in lacquer
night: bamboo by convention
temple by impression, water
by lines made real enough
to swallow us in our fine robes
to take us in
to our less
well-drawn
selves—still
iridescent shells
& we believed
in reality
until wedges
surrounded us
with frames
we couldn't name
No exit but our eyes
No world on the other side
--a bowl empty of ink
--E.K. Switaj
Third Place is a tie:
Karen Greenbaum-Maya & Maranda Haynes
How to get to Paris
Here, the leaves are perfect as fans,
the pebbles symmetric
and shiny as birds’ wings.
Lake, sky, trees, the clouds
are framed, each frames another,
even the boxes are boxed in.
Life is not like this in Paris.
Bowls follow us, hovering, whispering.
We smell their green tea sloshing.
When you hear the gurgle,
cover your head with your heavy silk sleeve
before the swarming starts.
We seem mild and stately. No one suspects.
Our sleeves are heavy with offerings.
We hasten to the shrine,
not to meet secret lovers,
but to buy lottery tickets
[pour acheter des billets de loterie].
Numbers came to us in a dream,
written on a hundred bowls,
pearly as a hundred moons.
In Paris, we’ll drink café crème from bowls.
We will let down our long hair,
dye it manzanita red.
-- Karen Greenbaum-Maya
2D
Like twins, the wizened pair
Tread slightly where they go
Through plains of two dimension
Through summer and through snow
When beauty full surrounds them
They hardly see themselves
Yet clear their introspect
When blades lay on the shelves
Strong they are as two
They’ll travel wide and far
And in the autumn leaves
They’ll bathe their winter scars
Like twins, the wizened pair
Tread forward, never back
The path ahead is orange
The road behind them, black
Our life is like two boxes
Containing right and wrong
And each of us, two people
Collaborating song
Like twins, we take our journeys
And live our Yin and Yang
And seek to relish nature
According to a plan
Like twins, the wizened pair
Tread slightly where they go
Through plains of two dimensions
Through summer and through snow
-- Maranda Haynes
The Editors' Choice Selections
For now
safe. For now the pieces of you are pieces of me
and we swallow the same
music.
Late at night, no one but us in this
skin.
Hiccup and I will feel you, knees and elbows
of what is nested
within.
You double me, heavy us, double
and strange me till I am
beautiful and eerie,
formal and grateful
that you are still
safe.
What she had seen and lost
and what she had known in fable,
what she approached over and over
in her mind’s eye, more vivid
at each 4:00 am visit,
each shining apparition
in the dark-pooled light
of the fruit cellar,
the schatzkammer.
This she might yet recover—
this seed enclosed in the rind
of a cloud-bound moon
or a root-tangled moon
caught in a mirror of
a well’s black face.
~
The editors would like to thank all of the entrants for allowing us to read their poems, and we encourage all of you to check out the latest Mystery Box.