As of September 5th, 2009, Best Poem will no longer be accepting submissions.  Archived poems will be available indefinitely.

Don’t Lecture Me Augustine

About plums stolen after dark
from the rich who sleep well
in soft beds of history.
I wanted to die young
but it’s too late for that.
I wanted to steal
with the laughter
of getting away with it.
Instead the stiffness
of age stole me away
from myself, and now
those green, hard fruit,
the ones brought down
by their predisposition
for sunlight, water—
lie sour as a crone’s breast
beside the dumpster
waiting for the man’s hands
to cut their downed branches
into lengths
and tie them up with twine.
Don’t presume sin lies
in the province
of men alone. Women
also want more
than their share of pleasure.
When they take it is without
the wineskin or the rites
passed down father to son.
It is from women who wear
the name Puta like a badge,
and the men who give them
whatever sweets their body
still craves, those men
pretend the body
is a temple where alms are given
regardless of celebration.

Judith Skillman’s eleventh collection of poems is “Prisoner of the Swifts” Ahadada Books (ahadadabooks.com). Her current manuscript “The Never” was a finalist for the FIELD/Oberlin Press Award in 2009. “Heat Lightning: New and Selected Poems 1986 – 2006“ was published by Silverfish Review Press, Eugene, Oregon, 2006. The recipient of an award from the Academy of American Poets for her book “Storm” (Blue Begonia Press, 1998), Skillman’s work has appeared in Poetry, FIELD, The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, Seneca Review, and numerous other journals and anthologies. Please see www.judithskillman.com for more information.

Sundown

Do you crave a coquina
ebbed waist-deep
in the Gulf’s glistening
black sand?

The coquina’s pulse
is weak.

Or would you prefer
to lie
suspended in a hammock,
a cocoon of sorts,
both ends notched
to the infinite?

A puzzle that requires no resolution?

Wait! I’ve got it!
I’ll bet what you really crave are exhausted
salmon muscles just beginning
to sag from the old arm bones
of the dusky sky.

Or are you simply,
hopelessly predisposed,
indefatigably infatuated
with a simple
dark-waisted coquina
half-sunk
in the glistening Gulf?

Alan Britt’s recent books are Greatest Hits (2009), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). The Poetry Library (www.poetrymagazines.org.uk) providing a free access digital library of 20th & 21st century English poetry magazines with the aim of preserving them for the future has included Britt’s work published in Fire (UK) in their project. Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008. Britt recently served as Panel Chair for Poetry Studies & Creative Poetry for the PCA/ACA Conference 2007 in Boston and read poetry at Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ (2009) and the WPA Gallery/Ward-Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, NY (2008). Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2008. Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formerly feral cats.

Sweet Potatoes

Running below the surface
Of Yucatán peninsula,
Spreading tuberous rhizomes,
Throughout the habitable land, and
Creating a tubercle of provision,
You, truffle over coal briquettes,
Burning starch into malt sugar
Hanging upside down by wire loops
In burning unglazed jars,
Baked by dexterous hands,
Flipped on itinerant carts,
Cosseted as a delicacy,
You force us to believe that
Sweetness is all.

Mukesh Williams has been published in The Copperfield Review, Muse India, Centrifugal Eye, The Blue Fog Journal of Poetry, Foliate Oak, Plankton, Istanbul Literary Review, The Mainich Daily News and Best Poem. His poetry possesses a startling mixture of Japanese minimalism and Foucaldian coups. His works have been quoted in reputed journals from The Journal of Commonwealth Literature to The Other Voices International Project. He is listed in Marquis Who’s Who and the World Poetry Directory of UNESCO 2008. Williams has published two books of poems, Nakasendo and Other Poems 2006 and Moving Spaces, Changing Places 2007. His co-authored book Representing India 2008 has been favorably reviewed in the media. He teaches at Keio University-SFC and can be contacted through his blog site.

bloom

pull back the gun, heavy in your hands
and you hear it sigh, an hourglass
turned. whispers like hail.
and you remember
the poppy fields.
trigger clicks and those bursts of red bloom,
you close your eyes
so the target never leaves.

ten thousand wind chimes surrounding me scream
with the dark petaled smell of the city
so that no one can hear the shot.
there was a light far away that only i see
and it was taken from me, too.
the desert so dry that only beautiful things bloomed
is where i stay, forgotten.
you see no blood fields there.
a man once walked for miles
said he circled the world
and the desert never ended.
so i kick up dust
just ashes from a ghost town so
i can one day bloom too.

Raisa Tolchinsky was born in Portland, Oregon and moved to Chicago when she was three. She has been writing since then. Outside of writing, she competes in rock climbing and wishes to travel someday. She is 14 years old.

Luck

Consider, daughter, our ancestors’ luck,
all those bullets missing vital organs,
the luck of our people running from Viking raids,
surviving plagues in almost emptied towns,
toxic roots in famines, germs in the veins,
and gorings on the tusks of mastodons.

All our people suffering close calls
and going on to breed made possible
you and me. Then such escapes should be
family heirlooms more than silver or gold
and we as the result should know we are
heirs of unimaginable fortunes

that with every breath should make us glad,
and to which you, in your escapes, will add.

As for me, before you were begot,
I put the point of a screwdriver on
a touchy wire and almost got killed.
Following a sandbar out, I drowned
almost once. Once, I would have pulled
in front of a truck, but for your mother’s shout.

Such pre-begotten luck is properly yours,
as it flows down your tributary line,
but any escapes I’ve had since you were born,
are unbequeathable, entirely mine,
such as this afternoon my having learned
the monster that attacked me was benign.

That’s a blessing I cannot pass on,
except in this, my trivial newborn son.

John Milbury-Steen has work published or forthcoming in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, Bumbershoot, The Centrifugal Eye, Chimaera, Christianity and Literature, Contemporary Sonnet, Dark Horse, The Deronda Review (Neovictorian/Cochlea), Kayak, Hellas, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Listening Eye, Lucid Rhythms, The Piedmont Literary Review, Scholia Satyrica, Shenandoah, Shattercolors, the Shit Creek Review and Umbrella. He served in the Peace Corps in Liberia, West Africa; did a Master’s in Creative Writing with Ruth Stone at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; worked as an artificial intelligence programmer in Computer Based Education at the University of Delaware; and currently teaches English as a Second Language at Temple University, Philadelphia.

Grayhound

Every day after their lunch,
he accompanies his middle-aged mistress
on a walk around the block. This
tall, slender, gray-haired gentleman.

He always takes the side nearest the road,
just in case. He knows
more about the world than she does;
knows what can happen. How,

for no reason at all, and quickly,
one can be made to suffer.
Meeting her changed his life. In his quiet way,
he has tried to let her know this. He,

who could outrun the wind, always
slows his pace to hers, stepping along
almost delicately, brushing
against her, the leash slack between them.

Nina Yuliano loves a certain kind of clear, quiet poetry; animals; gardens; and the outdoors.

Three Poems

*

Remembering insects in Genova, Italy

Insects here are so dark
it is difficult to distinguish
them from night. Distracted
by their ebony, I lose track

of the precision of each jaw
and sting, delicate and powerful
as earbones. That’s the funny
thing about colour, it can reassure

you one moment, deceive you another.
The subtlest changes register
like tremors leading up to an earth
quake, hitting when we least expect it.

*

Roosts

Everything roosts
in something,
 
the nesting rain
tells me. Swans

stitch new habitats
out of the river

and reeds, the moon
moves in a sack

of sky. Conversations
huddle in the colour

coded nerves of a pay
phone. My baby son

rests his head against
my chest, the sound

of a bird that has travelled
far echoing in his breathing,

followed by rustling,
as if building shelter.

* 

History Lesson

We regurgitated A-Bomb, Nagasaki,
Hiroshima like wasps building

a nest out of everything that has
been chewed upon, deliberated.

Words bitter as newsprint turned
our stomachs. Some rushed to bathrooms,

others sat and breathed deeply
to cleanse out the mushroom clouds

suspended inside of us. One, a boy
who would later die from cancer, went

outside and stuck his tongue out
as if expecting to taste snowflakes

because everything suddenly became
white, so beautifully white.

Christian Ward is a 28 year old London based poet. His work has appeared in Diagram, The Kenyon Review, Welter and elsewhere.

Invitation

Would you like to unwind
an afternoon at the lake?
Solar sparks spilling over us
in showers of golden sizzle.
Put on short shorts, skimpy tops,
stick our toes into oozy mud.
Breezes will shake treetops
while we listen to birdsongs.
Why not float on new grass
facing an Alice blue sky?
Read celestial comic strips
from mounds of clouds.
We can count sunbeams,
chase yellow butterflies.
Devour bowls of cherries
painting our lips crimson.
This noontime is perfumed
with illions of wild flowers.
Let’s go away all day…be
embraced by the goddess.

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Boston Review of the Arts, Kalliope, Mudfish, Spectrum and Word Thursdays. Four of her books have been published by fine literary presses. She has performed at the National Arts Club, State University of New York, Oneonta, McNay Art Institute and other distinguished venues. A recent reading was sponsored by the American Academy of Poetry. Her latest title is Having Lunch with the Sky, A.P.D. Press, Albany, New York.

Joy

The cup of life is not so shallow
That we have drained the best.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fireflies flashing over hip-high corn–
breathe deep
as if it’s the first time this joy unfurls
like a ribbon from the pith beneath your ribs.
Witness dusk now shading in corners
of the sky, indigo shadows
tunneling with the sun. Taste
a miracle tonight. Taste its sacred
nectar. Hear the low whine of the owl.
Hold the jewel of the night
in your open hand.

Julie L. Moore is the author of Slipping Out of Bloom, forthcoming from WordTech Editions, and the chapbook, Election Day (Finishing Line Press). A Pushcart Prize nominee and recent recipient of the Rosine Offen Memorial Award from the Free Lunch Arts Alliance in Illinois, Moore has also won the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize from Ruminate: Faith in Literature and Art. She has contributed poetry to Alaska Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, Blue Earth Review, Briar Cliff Review, Chautauqua Literary Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, Dogwood, Flint Hills Review, Free Lunch, The MacGuffin, Sou’Wester, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among many others. She lives in Ohio, where she directs the Writing Center at Cedarville University. Her website is www.julielmoore.com.