Sherry Chandler

Finishing Line Press Prize in Poetry
Open Chapbook Competition

A prize of $1,000 and publication by Finishing Line Press will be given annually for a chapbook-length collection of poetry.

James Scruton will final judge. The prize is open to all poets, regardless of publication history. All entries will be considered for publication and up to 15 manuscripts will be selected for the fall and spring lines. Submit up to 26 pages of poetry plus bio, acknowledgments, and cover letter with a $15 entry fee by June 30, 2005. POSTMARK

Send to:
Open Chapbook Competition
Finishing Line Press
P.O. Box 1626
Georgetown, KY 40324

(859) 514-8966

finishingbooks@aol.com
www.finishinglinepress.com

NOTE: Dance the Black-Eyed Girl was a finalist in this competition in 2002.

I realized yesterday that it’s been over a month since I’ve posted a new poem of my own either here on the blog or over on the poetry page. So I’ve corrected that. Check it out. There’s an audio file there if you’d like to hear me read it.

I’ve been negligent of blog matters lately, distracted by several projects including my garden where the lettuces love these cool green and blue days but the eggplants are plagued by flea beetles. TR picks them off with the sticky side of duck tape (handyman’s secret weapon) but they proliferate.

We’ve had such a lovely week I thought it would be appropriate to put up a springtime poem filled with blooms and bees but I discovered that I have a more autumnal view of life (and most of the honeybees have disappeared around here due to one plague or another). So, having recently been to a wedding, I decided to feature “Anniversary” from Dance the Black-Eyed Girl. The view of marriage expressed here is more dog days than spring but perhaps it will serve as a balance to all the garter tossing. And to balance that balance, I’ll share this photo of the sunrise at Elk Ridge Hunt Club in Owen County. The white tent is where my greatniece had her wedding reception.

This poem is about ten years old and I changed it some when I included it as part of a grant application last year. The version on the poetry page is from the book and so is the reading that you’ll find there. TR says I maybe went a little heavy on the weariness in the reading. Bless his heart, he is long suffering.

Here is the redacted version. No poem is ever finished.

Anniversary

Is it today? Tomorrow? Yesterday? No matter.
Some day recently past or some instant soon to come
I will have been wed to you exactly half my life.
Just as well say it’s today that I will breathe in
on one side of the divide and breathe out
on the other. Goodbye youth.

I open my mouth and hear you speak,
I listen with your ears, see with your eyes.
Is this a foundation I can build wisdom on?
Or has possibility narrowed to a 50th anniversary photo,
white-haired and jowly, I in lavender, you in gray?

It is well past the time for second thoughts.
We are grown together like tumor and healthy flesh.
I can’t tell you which is which,
only that it’s gone beyond a surgeon’s skill.
Should I mourn the crossing of this divide?
Or celebrate? Or just go on breathing in and out?