Exhibitionists on Display at Annual Mount Parnassus Poetry Competition

“Poetry is a revelation in words by means of the words.” 
—Wallace Stevens 


MC: (through a bullhorn, bucolically) 

All right, you noble riders of the purple page, kindly listen up— 
Would the next round of supplicants willing and able 
To step out of line and sacrifice everything 
Save their skins please come forward and begin

Jockeying for positions to reveal themselves? 

For The Time Being, A Schema

Overwhelmed 
Unable to nail down just where 

You fit in, you end up 
Under the myriad 

Specks of heaven, trying 
To pinpoint 

The exact location always 
Beginning somewhere 

Out there. 

Déjà Vu

Any time now, the alarm 
Clock that’s melting 
And running off the bed- 
Side table like candle 
Wax will go off 
Just as you reach 
Over to turn 
It off and try 
To go back 
To sleep. 

. 


Any time now 
But not this time— 
That burnt-out 
Dream you’re stuck in 
Won’t let you go back 
To sleep again. 

Looking Wisdom in the Face: Athena's Olive

Surely it should show 
When one gets this old, 

One should know how 
Wrinkles grow. 

Landscape, Corporeal

At first only a hint 
Something’s gone wrong 

In the interior and that in itself 
So slight you’d never have noticed 

Save for the mounds 
Of earth the mole’s left 

Exiting the premises.