Christal
Rice Cooper
*All
of the poems were previously published on the F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald
Museum web page.
**Each
poet is given total and complete copyright privilege of his/her poem.
***The
Chris Rice Cooper Blog would like to thank each individual who gave the Chris
Rice Cooper Blog permission to print his/her poem and his/her photograph.
The F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum hosts its annual poetry contest
in honor of Scott and Zelda, who found their love “the beginning and the end of everything” and pledged their love
for one another “even if there isn’t any
me or any love or even any life.”
“I love her, and that's the beginning and
end of everything.”
“I love you
anyway-even if there isn't any me or any love or even any life.”
The F.
Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum located at 919 Felder Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama holds its poetry contest
each December.
Both Scott and Zelda wrote poetry and were fans
of poetry. More importantly, their love
story, especially with all of its tragedies, is like one big epic poem, which
continues to this very day.
There were 52 applicants from 20 states (Alabama,
California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine,
Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas,
and Utah) and five countries: Australia,
Egypt, India, Morocco, and the United Kingdom.
The goal of the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum is two fold- first to get
applicants from every state to enter; and secondly, to get applicants from each
country of the world to enter.
We are grateful for those who helped spread the
word of the contest via Facebook and email; are grateful for all 52 applicants
who entered; and would like to congratulate the winners . . .
***
***
High School 1st
Place - $150
Chasity Hale, Florida
Dear Scott,
Yesterday
at midnight, I found:
no
one is easy to love,
(but
I will try to be.)
Let’s
crack open these years
and
crawl inside them.
Tonight
, hold me.
Tell
me, you too are wasted
and
foaming with desire
(for
life
for
that thing that sounds like living,
for
money,
for
more time…)
When
I ask:
Isn’t
youth just stony jazz
skipped
across city streets
like
oceans?
Say:
I skipped Honeysuckle Rose
I skipped Honeysuckle Rose
and
Stardust, they swung
across
the asphalt’s swells,
spun
horizontally then sunk.
(If
you’re quiet,
you
can still hear them hum.)
You
think,
happiness
is strange
like
thundershowers/
When
we were younger,
it
was widely scattered
(but
now, there are grooves in your skin
from
all the music vibrations
over
the years having bounced against you.)
and
it falls in isolation.
You
think,
there
is no happiness in aging;
the
music has been falling for years now,
it
is below a whisper.
Spits
of joy wet one side of the block,
but
not the other.
You
don’t like the weather.
You
cross the street.
***
***
A photo of Zelda after she was released from the Switzerland clinic and on her way to Montgomery Alabama.
High School 2ndst
Place $100
Sophya Giudici-Juare, Florida
On Shallow
Rocks
I
am told that demoralized things taste a lot like metal.
I
should have done something
when
I watched her bleed copper and nickel
on
every birthday.
Now,
my bedside table reeks of pennies
and
I wake up with an iron taste in my mouth.
I
wash it out with whiskey
and
chase it with bitter poetry—
just
enough to mask the silence in my home.
I
still have ink stains on my knife
from
where her voices hurt me.
Each
manic episode is a tollbooth
and
I have run out of patience to pay.
Her
empty side of the bed
reminds
me of a black hole,
so
I try not to get too close.
I
knew we had gone past the point of return
when
she began oxidizing like metal tubing,
rusting
a dusty orange, just from living.
I
guess steel isn’t really meant to live forever.
***
F. Scott Fitzgerald smoking a cigarette
High School 3rd Place- Tie $50
Allyson Iferga, Florida
Unhealthful Wealth
Liters
of silver fill his mind,
His
daydreams are built of gold.
A
miser with ores in the pits of his heart,
the
richest of mines yet the darkest.
His
paramour is burning with a ruby red fever.
The
bills that come along with proper care,
could
be easily mistaken for a noose.
He’s
drowning in receipts he didn’t ask for,
fixing
a health he never destroyed.
He’s
occupying and monopolizing her love,
but
she shares his with pay.
She’s
tumbling into the palms of malady,
although
he’s trying to snag her first.
Just
a sacrifice can terminate the war,
but
is he willing to give up bread for honey?
The
bees are stinging his chest,
while
conundrums will dance in his head.
With
every second that learns to soar,
the
liters of silver flow down his cheeks.
***
High School 3rd
Place- Tie $50
Noah
Snitzer, Florida
Palace of The Fallen
Sunrays
tangle in a comb of branches
while
moss twists around a termite-ridden forearm,
whose
emerald veins shimmer in the darkness.
A
thick mist wafts through the hush undergrowth
and
slides its fingers down a cracked window,
leaving
droplets to peer into the shadows within.
Time
coughs dust on a faded, golden doorknob
to
conceal the fingerprints underneath,
as
if ashamed of the abandoned mansion
and
the secrets inside its porcelain eyes.
***
***
The Alabama River in Montgomery, Alabama
High School 4th
Place Honorable Mention $25rd
Jean-Marc
Van’t Verlaat, Florida
“River”
***
***
College 1st
Place $150
Tyler Raso, Ohio
Samskill Creek, 2004
Ideally,
you are not
the
raven in the picture.
You’d
prefer to be
robed
less in dusk
and
to speak less like dahlias
and
more like sunflowers—
those
which, just out
of
the frame, give a shape to faith.
Ideally,
you wouldn’t be
standing
perched atop the well,
and
wouldn’t even have the option
to
peer all the way down into it –
its
humid throat quivering
like
the ink font
of
a glum philosopher. Ideally,
the
bucket’s rope
wouldn’t
have snapped,
the
tired cobblestone
wouldn’t
have groaned echoes
of
steel – l leaving you contemplating
failing
as opposed to floating.
But,
most of all, you wouldn’t
be
the raven: the one with the slit wing,
With
the sky dry, still, and unbuoyant.
***
***
College 2nd
Place $100
Atar J. Hadari, United Kingdom
Eagles Never Share
When
I think of Zelda and Scott
I
remember the falconry in Welshpool,
The
man with the fine plume
On
his arm and a choice of obsessions:
He
said, “There is nothing like
– the force, the aggression,
the
unreasoning response,
there’s
no reasoning with it – it’s an eagle.”
And
the mystery of the bird
Roosted
on a small ring
The wings broad as ape’s arms
The wings broad as ape’s arms
The
eyes jealous as vermin.
And
shifting from claw to claw,
looking
at you as if from a thousand feet
it
might suddenly fall
And
catch your heart in mid-beat
And
eat it, still flying.
There
is no point in asking why.
It’s
an eagle
An
eagle is never done flying
And
it only loves the wind under its wing.
***
College 3rd
Place $50
Brittany Barron, Georgia
Southern Belle Burning
Zelda
Sayre Fitzgerald was identified as being one of the nine women who died on the
upper floors from smoke inhalation [at Highland Hospital, a mental health
facility, on March 10, 1948]; she was taken to Maryland for burial beside
Scott. Ironically, she was about to leave the hospital . . she was just days
from resuming her life in Montgomery, the place she still considered home.
—
Linda Wagner-Martin, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman’s Life
I’m
in Montgomery again, I think
when
the red face of flame beats my skin
it’s
July in Alabama:
coal-choked
meat
salty-sweet
sweat
barn
burner days
or,
the flickerings are side effects
of
electromagnetic therapy—
visions
flashing across the ceiling
blackening
it with memories
now
I’m a Southern Belle
in
a corset
now
I’m a bride
in
a wedding dress
now
I’m a mother
in
a hospital gown
now
I’m a patient
in
a straitjacket
this
is the way I burned:
not
with a bang
but
a siren call
***
***
College 4th
Place $24
Julian Gewirtz, United
Kingdom
“The Gang’s All Here”
****
Other 1st Place
$150
Mara Buck, Maine
A Few Hours
Buy
me shrimp
on a clear day when
I can see the blue of
the ocean replicated in
the clean white plate
the waiter brings
as he stumbles to our table.
on a clear day when
I can see the blue of
the ocean replicated in
the clean white plate
the waiter brings
as he stumbles to our table.
And
let there be wine.
Oh, not an obnoxious
Oh, not an obnoxious
cork-sniffing
vintage, only
something
soft and cool
that
soothingly sits politely
within
its twinkling glass.
Please
have a simple
violinist
silhouetted against
that
sea, playing, a bit
of bright Vivaldi.
All these things,
will you do for me?
of bright Vivaldi.
All these things,
will you do for me?
Let
me sit pertly in
a darkened, classy club—maybe
a darkened, classy club—maybe
the
Carlyle, maybe the Vanguard—
listening
to sophisticated stylings
with
those who drink too much,
neither
to forget nor to remember,
but
only because it is there.
My little black dress will
be sexy, yet not tart,
and I will indulge in Campari
My little black dress will
be sexy, yet not tart,
and I will indulge in Campari
while
someone else pays the bill.
I will be witty. I will be gay.
I will sparkle.
I will be witty. I will be gay.
I will sparkle.
I
yearn to be with people who are glib.
I
crave cleverness.
Give me a quip, a pun—
quick-witted banter.
Give me a quip, a pun—
quick-witted banter.
Show
me the mettle of your
gray
matter.
Surround me with a neverending
Surround me with a neverending
round
of crystal martinis
of
the mind.
Loosen
my tongue with champagne.
Bathe
me in kindly
diamond-reflected winks.
Keep the music smoky to match
the innuendo of the other little black dresses
diamond-reflected winks.
Keep the music smoky to match
the innuendo of the other little black dresses
who
circle me with embracing cattiness.
Oh,
take me back to that place
where all is parties or nothing at all.
Let me glitter, let me astonish, let me flirt,
where all is parties or nothing at all.
Let me glitter, let me astonish, let me flirt,
until
the time comes when I must
go home alone, for tomorrow
I must be whatever passes for me.
go home alone, for tomorrow
I must be whatever passes for me.
*Originally
published by Caper Literary Journal, subsequently
published by Clarke’s Journal of the Arts
and in the poem-a-day series honoring HIV/AIDS.
***
***
Other 2nd
Place $100
Anne Whitehouse, New
York
Smoke And Fog
On
one side of the road
was ice and fog,
on the other, smoke and fire.
was ice and fog,
on the other, smoke and fire.
We
were driving by the river
while
the fire burned above us
a
quarter-mile away.
Cool
on the driver’s side,
and
on the passenger’s,
the
closed window glass
was
hot to the touch.
Suffocating
smoke
billowed
into the air,
suffusing
the atmosphere
like
waterless blood.
The
river was clogged
with
floes of ice
melting in a sudden thaw.
melting in a sudden thaw.
Drawn
out of the snowmelt,
a
hazy fog hung low
over the water.
over the water.
Above
our heads,
above the roof of the car,
above the roof of the car,
the
smoke from the fire
met
the fog off the ice.
The
road took us
straight
up the middle,
if
that were a choice
we
were free to make.
****
****
Other 3rd
Place $50
John Hoppenthaler, North
Carolina
“Manatees”
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