Joy Yourcenar - Second Place


Storm Tide


Rising defiantly,
from weathered winter sands,
a single naked pipe,
still erect on the beach
speaks eloquently of loss.

Islands of desire,
we sit
knee to knee
on  barely felt
barnacle-encrusted rocks,
words flowing 
in tidesoft whispers.
Passion erodes
the line of reason
and my resolve
is worn smooth,
bitter and perfect
as mermaid's tears.


Prodigal

The carrion eaters 
are circling in a desert sky, 
called by your relentless decay.

You who are prodigal 
with time waste hours, 
spilling minutes
on the ground as carelessly as water.

In the dry time when 
cold-blooded creatures
crawl onto the rocks to sun themselves
the heat they crave will desiccate you.

Before you mummified desire,
His used to be a paradise,
lush, green, expansive,
before you took away the topsoil
and the rich heart of the earth blew away,
there was the possibility of love.

An insufficient steward,
your anger brought sirocco
and all that was quick and lithe
withered at your rejection.

Now that there are no more waterfalls
you who are prodigal look back in sorrow
and weep dry, sand soaked tears.


Messiah Complex
for J. Arthur Wood

His was the pure, articulated beauty
of the professional martyr.
Teaching me the price of redemption,
he was my savior 
and I watched him crucify.
When he removed his hair shirt
I longed to press my cheek
against his open back,
a second-hand subjugation
to his revised vision.

In his icon cuts,
congealed blood beads clarified,
fermented to fervor
and refined his exquisitely latticed suffering
into the universal salvation
of  aesthetic sensibility.
Flails became obsolete.

Lacking stigmata,
I couldnt even offer him
the smell of rain
on my unpierced hands.

 To be published in the 1998 Stolen Island Review

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