The Nation announces the winners of Discovery/ The Nation, the Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize. Now in its twenty-eighth year, it is an annual contest for poets whose work has not been published previously in book form. The new winners are: Linda Jenkins, Gregory McDonald, Andrew Varnon and Stefi Weisburd. This year’s judges are Catherine Bowman, Carolyn Forché and Paul Muldoon. As in the past, manuscripts are judged anonymously. Distinguished former winners include Susan Mitchell, Katha Pollitt, Mary Jo Salter, Sherod Santos, Arthur Smith and David St. John. This year’s winners will read their poems at Discovery/The Nation ’02 at 8:15 pm on Monday, May 6, at The Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue (92nd Street and Lexington Avenue) in New York City.
–Grace Schulman, poetry editor
The Lewis & Clark Snowglobe
There exists one, anti-gewgaw, memento
ingenuous as any wonder,
though I’ve never seen nor heard of it, and yet–
as is revolution of heavenly body, of colony–
all’s a given. The only question being which scene
of scenes? Spring 1804: keelboat,
all fifty-five feet of it, curses
the Missouri’s sawyers–
Shake it and snow that falls in summer
plagues unseen men–Clark’s “misquetors.”
Or Lewis gazes, dizzy with May and his first
“plain and satisfactory view” of the Rockies’
plastic expanse, its blue-lipped ardor soothing
words Northwest Passage forever.
In a roadside gift shop,
Sacagawea proves false
an old adage; Home again Home again, swirls
her first moments back
among the Shoshones; with a knick-knack’s economy,
sixteen mounted warriors become
one or two; her lost brother has become chief,
and they embrace:
novelist’s fantastical turn.
It’s the day a horse takes badly a Bitterroots precipice, the group–
ravenous, anonymous, androgynous–proceeds,
one colt divided among thirty-plus bellies. It’s Clark,
jubilant at the first
(if false) view of Pacific.
It’s hermetic 1806 St. Louis,
its sluicy tempest of rounds and cheers.
And not famed, not at all likely
to be the scene, yet Washington’s elite toasts Lewis
with a ball; outside, glitter falls–and Lewis, triumphant, drunk
off the New Year, raises his glass, voices
a toast of his own:
“May works be the test
of patriotism as they ought, of right, to be of religion,”
as they ought (redundant or no) to be of love.
Linda Jenkins
It was in an Age of Such Incredible Secrets
It was in an age of such incredible secrets
that my mother began to paint her toenails
the color of eggshells, and my father
learned how to make love with his hands
at his side. I saw them practicing once,
but all I could think about was our icebox
full of fish and ketchup, and the small wooden bird
above my grandmother’s bed, rocking back and forth,
dipping its red beak into a bowl of water.
Gregory McDonald
What I Remember
1.
I lift the bottle every time you catch me
looking at you. In all the apartment
complexes down Alafaya Trail,
I roll on the floor away from the wet nose
of a basset hound. Pennies spill
that I will forget; lips are moving but
I can’t keep my footing in the mud.
Spanish moss hangs from a tree, there is a frog
and everybody throws water balloons.
2.
A black dress with pink flowers
A storm over the gulf at sunrise
Empty beach chairs face turquoise
Traffic lights change without cars
3.
I chase you with whiskey and chase
whiskey with beer and chase an armadillo
around the art gallery, muttering something
about “plasticity” or “negative space.”
The search lights catch up with me. I walk
out the back door too easy, afraid of fists
that put holes in your wall. Mine
is the long walk home under streetlights
with only beat cops and that one Muddy Waters
song I know to keep me company, me and that
thirsty head full of wilderness I’m so afraid of.
Andrew Varnon
Elegy For Two
A yowling pulls like tides at our blind ear
from down the hall. The sound of Baby’s ire
at God knows what, the broken night, the leer
of suns, I said. The nurse spit out: Liar.
Eyes of fruit and cinder block conspire.
His cries would fever milk and wrench the bed.
A letter in my husband’s hands perspires.
For the love of God, it’s just a cat, my nurse said.
But cats don’t antidote true love or shred
the film of sleep with shrill ballistic shrieks
or tick heart’s tomb, slash the vagrant thread,
tear the doll to wipe the bloody streaks.
Cats don’t rasp or beg with gnawing squall
on stairs to help the helpless totter, fall.
Stefi Weisburd
