Beyond hooks and shadows

  Dags för sista heatet i min lilla tävling "Poem of the week", där sex webbplatser gör upp om vilken som ger de bästa veckodikterna till sina följare. Jag har presenterat de fem första kandidaterna: Griffin Poetry Prize, Missouri Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, samt Poem of the week.org
  Den sjätte deltagande webbplatsen är Inpress Books. 

  Det är en imponerande brittisk nätbokhandel som tar tillvara de oberoende förlagens publicerade verk. Deras deklaration lyder:
"Inpress is the UK’s specialist in selling books produced by independent publishers. Since 2002, we have worked to support innovative, literary publishers across the UK and Ireland, delivering their fiction, poetry and non-fiction to book lovers worldwide. We bring painstakingly-created, innovative and outside-of-the-mainstream books together in one place so that you can browse, buy and love them, wherever you live."

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  Här följer så att säga laguppställningarna. På förhand tyckte jag att Griffin Poetry Prize hade en imponerande kvintett. Hur det gick får ni veta i morgon kväll.

Griffin Poetry Prize		Missouri Review		The Times Literary Supplement
Don McKay		Michelle Boisseau		Carole Sutyamurti
Sue Goyette		Benjamin Landry		Ingeborg Bachmann
C.D. Wright		Charlie Bondhus		John Hall Wheelock
Derek Mahon		Jeffrey Bean		Jean Sprackland
P.K. Page		Susan Tichy		C.J. Driver
The Guardian		Poem of the week.org		Inpress Books
Waldo Williams		Christina Stoddard		Mila Haugova
Stanley Moss		Katherine Young		Vicky Arthurs
Joseph Campbell		Bill Brown		Monica Minott
Rebecca Perry		George David Clark		Owen Gallagher
Kapka Kassabova		Juan Morales		Octavian Paler

och dikterna till det tionde heatet får ni nu ...

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Definition of loneliness, by Octavian Paler
(from Definitions : poems. London : Istros, 2011.)

Beyond the wind
a bird with a bitter shadow
beats its wings,
burying seeds in shadow,
burying with every beat
the words mislaid by me.

**

Fish hook, by Juan Morales
(from The siren world. [Fruita, Colorado] : Lithic Press, 2015.)

I was five when I learned my own blood.
Dad and I fished the lake of cement slabs,
out past yellow grass, our feet jammed in mud.
I pulled the snagged line. Snapped back. The hook stabbed
my thumb, slid past bone, dented the fingernail.
The sun's search for horizon came about
reflecting filament line, a detail
like dad dropping the bucket of caught trout. 

Everything halted: the water still cold,
red salmon eggs stuck on our hooks for bait. 
He steadied my hand-shaking, uncontrolled.
Father worked the hook. Barbs excavated
through skin ripped. For the tiny hole, I cried,
the blood pools in our hands I could not guide.

**

Song for an unborn brother, by C.J. Driver
(first published in TLS, 29/5 2009.)

The one who should have been the first,
My mother lost at thirteen weeks.
My parents saved his name for me
And one there sleeps, and one here wakes.

I wonder what he might have been
Since what I am would not exist.
What little gap there seems to be
Between my body and the dust.

So when I'm dead (as dead as him)
Will I then seem as never born?
A shadow lost when lights went out?
A matchhead struck which didn't burn?

Abundance thrives despite our loss:
The glass reflects, the glass refracts -
My brother's flesh and my own self
Still suppositions more than facts.