ChicagoPoetry.com is pleased to announce the Winners of the 2005 Frieda Stein Fenster Memorial Award for Poetry. Entries were judged by three distinguished Chicago poets: Beatriz Badikian-Gartler, Ph.D (author of Mapmaker Revisited), Pamela Miller (author of Recipe For Disaster and the 1st place winner of the 2004 contest), and Michael Watson (host of the WLUW Worslingers poetry show). Poems that were submitted according to the rules were judged blindly.

Cash awards are as follows: first place winner will receive $100; second place winner will receive $50; and third place winner will receive $25. Winners are invited to appear and read their winning poem for The Chicago Poetry Explosion, a National Poetry Month celebration at Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, on Sunday, April 17, 7:30 PM. Winners may pick up their award checks and certificates at the Poetry Explosion or any time thereafter. In addition, the first place winner will receive her own personal page here at ChicagoPoetry.com for one year.

The 2005 Winners are:

After The Crash



My thighs bruise a furious purple,

welts explode, then fade away

like thunder on trees.



His fist ricochets, leaves an opaque white mark

like the imprint of our daughter's slight hand in clay

framed in the front hallway.



Seven years I've been here,

lucky number seven.

Lucky for me if his road rage catches my shoulder

instead of colliding with my face.



Seven the age of our daughter,

the one gift he gave,

though at the time she was named

Accident,

just his hard seed forced into me

a result of icy, wet conditions.



Now she waves a fairy costume wand,

steps forward with question-mark eyes

a witness to the hit and run.



I lie in metal, warped and twisted,

in the tunnel of silence she blinks,

etches on her heart all details to recall later



so she can detour,

outline in yellow highlighter on her map

which direction to take.



Hard lines are formed

A boomerang, I return.



After the crash I stare into hard headlight eyes,

my firm, capable hands,

analogous to my daughter's 

hers marked in clay, forever small.



I seize her power and take back my own.



My hands swell and I rise,

we drive away.

In the Waiting Room at Bernard Mitchell Hospital



The voice in my head can be so different than the one that comes

out of my mouth.  I think aubergine, but say eggplant, something

like coming back from Paris but not knowing where to begin.

I had intended to look back and put things together, but it's hard

to speak sympathetically about this moment.  I was heartbroken



once I heard the news.  I regret never having learned another

language.  I wish I knew how to read music.  The French know

how to make eggplant sound sexier than it really is, like a secret

meeting to share photocopied pages of a banned novel.  There are

notes on survival in the margins of any given season, there are bodies



resembling pictures of hostages found on the roadside

of an occupied country.  I say disease, but think quiet place

by the river.  There's a narrative I love about a woman who goes

outside to shoot crows that disturbed her sleep.  It's a form

of surgery by any other name, an exaggerated appearance 



through the fog, a mythology of rooftop dreamers.  I say

waiting room, but picture Jeu de Paume, a hotel nestled 

between branches of the Seine.  I don't remember the last time

I told my wife I loved her.  A sign at the door asks that we forgive

the appearance of the lobby as it undergoes renovation

One, Two, and Then There Were Three



1.



My little yolk

Daddy listens for your heartbeat with his

You bear the scent of hyacinth

Your bones form like the whiskers of an orchid

I wrap you in the cashmere of cala lilies

Cozy you on a bed of buttercup and crocus

My little yolk

Open your eyes wide



2.



In summer heat

I lie awake,

waiting for your somersaults

to tickle my spleen.

You steal my words away.

Later I will feed them to you

with my fingertips.

Let the juice of language run

down my wrist.

How many ways you will surprise me.

Pluck the world with new eyes.

In summer heat

I lie in wait of you

to stir and stutter-a-flutter

in my belly.



3.  (And then there were Three.)



In the half-passed night

we lay air tight,

swimming in the syllables of each other's names.



We whisper in half-sleep

she has your toes,

           my lips,

           our hearts.



On the precipice of language,

we suck the silence of her mouth.

This is our life, between our skins,

unspoken,

pulsing