I’m thrilled that another of my poems has appeared on the Guardian’s Poetry Workshop shortlist. This workshop’s theme on ekphrasis was written by Amy Newman. Checkout my poem, How to perceive red, and Newman’s comments here: Words on pictures.

Examine the sublime black
of the road: how it steers
the bike as if grooved,
through a cup
of warm air.
Bow over the drops,
tuck elbows and knees
above the sweet flex
of aluminum
and soon the leaves
cracked with autumn
will wish they could
fly too.

© 2005 Christine Klocek-Lim

Catch Episode 15 of The Countdown, miPOradio‘s poetry show:

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This show features poems by:

Riley Dog –
“Chemotherapy Omnibus”

Laurel K. Dodge –
“The Bough Has Broken”

David Raphael Israel –
“One Side of the Heart”

Erica W. Adams
42 Opus –
“Panegyrize”

Mark Young –
“so maybe there”

Christine Klocek-Lim –
“Tonight I Walked Into the Sunset”

Alison Stine –
No Tell Motel
“After Meat”

Amy King –
“Causes for Celebration”

Jill Chan –
The Eye

I received a “Commended Award” in the 2006 Margaret Reid Contest for Traditional Verse. This means that I won $50, which = shopping, which = new shoes!

And here’s the winning poem:

“Tonight I walked into the sunset”

—sonnet for Georgia O’Keeffe

Here the fragile white of age-bleached skull
curves through a hinge of jaw like youthful skin,
and there, two restless eyes seem fraught with all
she could not say. She didn’t paint within
the lines, couldn’t choose the safe belief
that everything is simple. Stark as grief
her violet buildings rise beneath a moon
so white that bone shows through. There the noon
sun lights the mountains. Here you see how hands
crack wide her heart: she painted sound, used blood
to mark the earth. Because she knew that strands
of life are drawn of clay and bone, not mud,
she wrote: “so give my greetings to the sky. . .”
And in her art the skulls nod in reply.

© 2006 Christine Klocek-Lim

Greetings!

The third issue of Autumn Sky Poetry is now online.

Read poems by Julie Carter, Janet Lynn Davis, Dennis Greene, Jeremy Heartberg, Jan Mueller, Stuart Nunn, Pat Paulk, Laura Polley, Gary Charles Wilkens, and Robin Yim.

—It’s all about the poetry.

Sincerely,
Christine Klocek-Lim, Editor

From the editor of 3 Quarks Daily:

OCHO #5, the print companion to MiPOesias Magazine, is now available.

Poems by Reb Livingston, Helen Losse, Christine Klocek-Lim, Grace Cavalieri, Amy King, Lars Palm, Daryl Rogers, Lesley Jenike, Karl Parker, Luc Simonic, Tom Blessing, Dave Ruslander, and Marl Hartenbach.

Here is a link to the Best American Poetry 2006 Table of Contents:

Best American Poetry 2006

If you scroll down, you will see that Reb Livingston’s poem, “That’s Not Butter” was chosen. That poem first appeared in MiPoesias, an online journal created by Didi Menendez and edited by Amy King.

Does this mean that the online poetry community has finally caught up with print journals? Perhaps.

after WCW

So much is lost in the seasons,
so much slips between
that infinitesimal sliver
of change: cold to hot in an instant,
one night’s sleep that becomes years
stretched out into the waking hours.
Here is where the crumpled red
paint of the barrow crouches
in the aged fist of the barn.
Here is where some old poet
used to walk, noticing everything,
taking note of the simple runnel
of rain that glazed the wood.

Nothing can make this landscape
walk backwards. How would we know,
anyway, which is better: yesterday’s bright
color, today’s comfortable weariness?
If we remember the white chickens
and the rain that slicked everything,
who is to say why the barn, once
shiny and upright with paint
and use, became ordinary,
now slouches into the horizon
like an old and familiar poem?

© 2006 Christine Klocek-Lim