Competition

First Prize

To Tom Waits
by Matthew Adams

Tom Waits, you have a voice
Like a werewolf prowling in a Louisiana graveyard eating
Kumquats? No, you have a voice
Like a werewolf howling in a Louisiana swamp and sinking
That’s more like it yeah
As you pound on a piano that is patched with pasties
And a g string flung over your shoulder
One hand hammering the keys, with the other you hold her,
The waitress who brings your whiskey,
The alright looking, slightly tired looking one with a bare
Midriff that bares the top of her undies
You’re only holding her because she holds your whiskey
Your glass of dreamkey
You sing around the cigarette hanging from your lips,
Songs of hard life
Songs of hard party life with your arm around a stripper’s hips
Playing tunes like cars,
Like big yank cars rolling from your smoke stained fingertips

Tom Waits you have a hell of a voice.

Second Prize

Thumbsucker
by Cate Bailey

give me your thumb
you return me to infancy;
simplicity of desire
but I am greedy
and you are naive

how infantile am i
to suckle at your discarded kindness
me: a podgy lump
of baby's flesh
useless;
gummy and mumbling,
teething and aching;
craving your time and affection;
yearning for approval

i am regressing
soon i will be a ball of cells;
a blastula,
and after that;
a twinkle in someone's eye
and further from you
than ever before

i need to pull my cells together