Resources on the Web | Milestones | By-Laws | Mission Statement |
Order Form | Writing Women Group |
Tennessee
Book Award - Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel
| 1st
Prize Flossie McNabb "The Prodigal Hair"
2nd Prize Brad Tice "Tin" 3rd Prize Elizabeth Howard "Counting Yesterdays" |
1st
Prize
The Prodigal Hair
Flossie McNabb
In the mirror this morning
I saw a black hair sticking
out
of my chin. I studied it
for a while
flicking it back and forth
with my finger,
amazed at the strength of
its root.
It’s the same hair, in precisely
the same spot, my daughter
used to yank out with her
tweezers.
She would hold it up to
me proudly
like it was a bullet and
she
had just saved her mother’s
life.
I have decided to let the
hair grow,
now that my daughter and
her tweezers
are in college. By June
my chin-hair
should be throat-length
and when I bow
my head to pray in church
I will be able to tickle
my breasts
if it’s warm out and I’m
wearing
a scooped-neck blouse.
By summer’s end if my daughter
is still away I shall garden
at twilight
on my knees, grasping my
trowel
and my chin-hair together,
teaching
the hair to gently loosen
and pamper
the soil beneath the moonflower
vine
until the huge flowers dazzle
us
with their brightness in
the night.
As the cool days of fall
turn to winter
I shall be snug with my
chin-hair
bundled about my neck, and
when my daughter
comes home for the holidays
she will gasp at the beauty
she sees
in our bay window, a Christmas
tree
sprayed white with artificial
snow
and wrapped around and around
with live garlands, thick
and black,
shining against the snowy
boughs.
I. What the Queer Kid was Thinking
When I was thirteen, my insides
looked like that rusted
watering can in the backyard.
The one that made a life
of collecting rain,
grafting whale-skin algae
as tissue along its sides.
You could see the ripple
of mosquito larvae
threading the water like
thin scribbles of birds
children place in the skylines
of their pictures.
I pretended I could keep
my soul in that can,
out of reach, wrapped in
riverweed.
There it would gather seasons—sudden
downpours of summer, thin
membranes of ice in November—
dug down in dark, golden
mud along the bed.
We all grow in puddles, halfway
between vapor and dirt,
vital as any child’s want
of dark corners. I stole
safety under pleats of surface-muck,
found cold truth in scum
and wet cinders, the shiver
of names schoolboys threw
in my face. I never
fit loosely into my skin,
and when you’re stretched
tight enough anyone can see
scripture written on your bones.
I had to be a Freudian slip
in God’s vocabulary.
He’d meant to say gleaming.
He’d meant to say silver.
Only it hadn’t come out quite
right-- energy dissipated
under the surface, in the
dimness of the pool’s center.
He’d meant to say goldfish
with whiskers, lotuses blossoming pink.
He’d wanted clay, not cracked-lip
earth under ultraviolet.
Maybe, I grew tired of awaiting
answers to prayers.
What’s more, my skinned
knees could’ve been better used
at other altars. I only wanted
someone to say
pagan, and really mean it--
whisper abomination
so I would know this was
a word for any creature
who could change its shape,
devolve
to a silver mosquito for
the boys’ tight bodies—
piercing and pulling their
insides out.
II. If I Only Had a Heart
Stand perfectly still, and
the world won’t notice.
On the walls of my grandmother’s
home is a family
frozen under sheets of flaring
glass—arrested smiles,
stiff joints. In the country,
dirt is everywhere.
My mother tells us not to
move, not to stain anything
as we smile for the camera.
It’s my grandparents’
fiftieth wedding anniversary,
and the family
looks as if they could be
stood upon cakes.
The photographer, in a pink
Oxford, directs
us where to stand. Husbands
and wives together,
youth seated at their feet.
In bursts of light,
we are taken in and held
forever, ghosts surfacing
from a chemical wash— Later,
unnoticed, I hear
uncles joke about the photographer.
How do queers
fake orgasms, they ask.
They spit on your back.
I wanted to be a burning
catalyst then, to set things
in motion, but somehow I
got stuck in the amber.
Years after, I let my first
boyfriend fuck me
in a broken field, scent
of opened earth under us,
just to see how soiled I
could get.
Then it seemed like the whole
world knew,
had me naked and on the
run. My uncle Jim pulled
me aside at a family gathering
to say he was sorry
for anything said in ignorance.
Around us,
oblivious cousins cartwheeled
through clover,
brothers sent Nerf footballs
in crescents through
the air. They asked me to
join them. Silence was
always hardest to suffer.
The way we close
ourselves behind gloss.
There are reasons why worlds
are kept in motion. If you
stand still long enough, rust
encircles the heart. Do
you know about oil, lubrication?
Have you heard about forgiveness?
3rd
Prize
Counting Yesterdays
Elizabeth Howard
Counting Yesterdays
Bloody fighting at Shiloh.
Many killed, many wounded.
No word from Papa.
Not daring to count risks,
Tobe and I set out, mud
binding wagon wheels.
Near the church, odors,
spirals of vultures.
A ways farther, bodies,
groanings, flies buzzing,
beaks and talons.
Peach orchard in shell-
shock, pink confetti
fluttering, a pall
on the ravaged earth.
Bodies choke the pond,
waters of blood;
guns, bayonets point
in all directions.
Too many to count,
a hodgepodge of blue,
gray, butternut. No
choice but to lift muddy
heads, look at anguished
faces. Glassy eyes
beg for water, leg
fragments drenched in it;
heaving chest grabs
my dresstail cursing,
face near gone,
teeth blackened husks.
Tobe strikes him with
a shattered peach limb.
"Leave l'il missus be!"
At dusk Tobe finds him,
facedown in mud, a hole
above his collar, twin
to the mole he bore.
And blood. I thought
of his beloved Shakespeare:
Who'd have thought the old man
had so much blood in him?
Tobe immerses him in the pond,
washes away the stains,
wraps him in Mama¹s quilt,
lifts him gently to the wagon.
He drives into
darkness, me tracking
a screechy wheel,
counting yesterdays,
not daring to count tomorrows.
Tennessee
Book Award - Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel