Sheila Margaret Motton Book Award, selected by Jennifer Militello
Winning Poet: Anna Rabinowitz, Words on the Street
THE TIME WAS THE TIME
Torn by worn-thin profits stitched to
the excess access of the brilliantly clothed
when Greed
was our national pass-time
Of Purchase, Plenty fashioned The Holy Scripture
a clutch of lust bespoke Currency
trapuntoed with gold,
stockpiles of Excel sheets dense with deceit
Unbridled riches galloped the streets
Rabid appetites hungered ceaselessly
We were helpless
We wrung our liquid hands
~~~
This Time was the Time the Future
undreamed itself
Our leaders declared
: THE END OF PENDING
Infants hugged their afterbirths
Children, like troublesome details, were marooned
within gaps of being with nowhere to turn
Adults counted their leg-lifts, folded up
and plunged to the sea
Ever on its way, language dispatched well-worn
slogans to refresh the old finery
The official Wampum, streaming falsehoods and cant
Scavenged for needles, thread, insider seams, scraps to patch
frayed cloaks unraveled by Crave
Our bodies once gravid with Eros and Be
now Bodies Prosthetic, bewitched by Procure and Amass
~~~
Outrage
out out rage
day and night
we had ignored the barbarian
gross, groping, gaudy, green-eyed Greed
day and night fair game
we played the game
too late Rage too late
Plenty neither satisfied
nor derailed the Great Reckon
Time out it’s time this time
WHERE TIME
EPISTLE TO THE OMNIVORES
WHAT’S FOR DINNER?
…O belly, O stinking bag filed with dung and corruption.
At either end of thee, foul is the sound…
Spawner of Sin
Gula, voluminous voluptuary, never gets her fill
Too soon, too delicately, too expensively, too greedily,
TOO MUCH
Spawner of Pride
Haggler, tippler, intriguer of feast
WHAT’S FOR DINNER?
Be not among winebibbers: among riotous eaters of flesh. For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
Spawner of Sloth
Gula,* worn by hungers
Fullness of bread
neither sates
nor placates
nor abates
Food and drink, with thee she schemes to live
Crapulous and unfulfilled
Discharge, phlegm, mucus running from the nose, hiccups, vomiting and violent belching…The increase in luxury is nothing but the increase in excrement.
Spawner of Greed
And like a Crane his necke was long and fine,
With which he swallowed up excessive feast.
Spawner of Lust
Flesh made safe
Death tied to the stake
Gula plays hostess at tables laden to groan
SO, WHAT’S FOR DINNER?
GREETINGS! WELCOME! TAKE A SEAT!
Qmnivores
THIS LETTER TO YOU!
Break bread with malignant maggots
gnats and flies
~~~
Beef gleams in the feast’s corpulent dusk
trout bathe in béchamel
succulent hens bask in béarnaise
pots de crème triple crème crème Anglaise
legs of lamb adorned with mint rosettes
pork roasts recline on polenta cakes
crustaceans wade in bouillabaisse
stuffed tongues boned hams breasts of veal
tureens of consommé bordeaux and beaujolais
sausage ropes coiled like salacious snakes
Omnivores
THIS FEAST IS YOURS
SAY GRACE
*Gluttony
NAVIGABLE LIGHT
Father, is it because there was nothing
to combat your desire to lie down
because we couldn’t render you
less spent by the relentless
drone of duplicate days,
because only an infrequent
visitor or a brief interlude
at the radio for the latest news
could distract you from submission
as you mounted the soft mound
of your bed and sank into sleep
Is that why
I misremember
some years
remember not at all
the anniversary of the day
you curdled in the dry silt
of flesh
archived forever in the want,
the lascivious, lustful
want, the insatiable succubus
that had pursued and
finally seduced you
What was it — that lovemaking,
that invincible consumption
a search for a splendor nowhere to be found
a pose repeated and renewed
in the ineffable
posture of diurnal sleep
a rehearsal for death
a ploy to gain entry
sooner than assigned
to the wickless night
How could we, —
at five, at eight, at thirteen, —
invade the ur-nuptial bed
how make our presence felt
our need known
This morning when the grackles arrived
I lit the Yahrzeit candle, a week late this time
and as it puddled in the glass
observed the raucous, chattering birds
Father, they apprentice themselves to survival
clutch their perches, contort
their heads into impossible arcs
to snatch seeds from the feeder
incessantly peck and explore the garden
From a distance they appear jet black
But if you take a closer look
They glitter in navigable light—
blue to purple, green to bronze,
a blaze of golden eyes.
Anna Rabinowitz
Anna Rabinowitz is an NEA poetry fellow and librettist. Her fifth volume of poetry is Words On the Street. Two previous volumes, Darkling and The Wanton Sublime were re-visioned as a chamber opera and an operatic monodrama, respectively. Darkling has been translated and published in German. Anna is now creating a theater piece based on Words on the Street.