Winners of the F SCOTT & ZELDA FITZGERALD POETRY CONTEST Are . . .

Christal Rice Cooper

caccoop@aol.com

https://www.facebook.com/christalann.ricecooper

*All of the poems were previously published on the F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum web page.

http://www.thefitzgeraldmuseum.org/poetry-contest-winners.html

**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.”

--F. Scott Fitzgerald in a letter to Zelda Fitzgerald

“I love you anyway-even if there isn't any me or any love or even any life.”

--Zelda Fitzgerald in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

       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 1^st 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

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 2nd^st 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 3^rd 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 3^rd 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 4^th Place Honorable Mention $25^rd

Jean-Marc Van’t Verlaat, Florida

“River”



***

College 1^st 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 2^nd 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 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 3^rd 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 4^th Place $24

Julian Gewirtz, United Kingdom

“The Gang’s All Here”

****

Other 1^st 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.

And let there be wine.
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?

Let me sit pertly in
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

while someone else pays the bill.
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.

Show me the mettle of your

gray matter.
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

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,

until the time comes when I must
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 2^nd 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.

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.

Drawn out of the snowmelt,

a hazy fog hung low
over the water.

Above our heads,
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 3^rd Place  $50

John Hoppenthaler, North Carolina

“Manatees”

http://nebula.wsimg.com/6c8d398b5baa553d79790b1a6e13dce3?AccessKeyId=29B7C13C0BE7BB1E94C0&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

Chris DeWildt's Crime Noir Novel "Kill Em With Kindness" an education of violence . . .

Christal Cooper

caccoop@aol.com

https://www.facebook.com/christal.cooper.18

Other CS DeWildt Features:

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2015/12/cs-dewildts-love-you-to-pulps-three.html

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2016/12/chris-dewilds-crime-noir-novel-kill-em.html

www.facebook.com/csdewildtauthor/?fref=ts

                www.allduerespectbooks.com

C.S. DEWILDT’S

Kill Em With Kindness

C.S. DeWildt on writing of Kill Em With Kindness: 

“I began writing the book about five years ago as a short story called “Our Hockey Girl”. It was a revenge story and originally the protagonist Nick was an elderly man. In my mind, I saw it as a “Grumpy Old Men meets Andre Dubus’s short story ‘Killing’,” but I was never happy with it. So, after about a dozen false starts (and a couple false finishes) I decided to age Nick down and the story just took off. It was the right decision.

There were a couple reasons for this. The first was I needed him to be a little more virile than I could plausibly expect an old man to be. Additionally, I felt that with an older protagonist I was getting bogged down in backstory, which I hate. Making Nick younger took care of both of these issues.

       Another reason was that I really wanted to write a straight noir novel and I wanted to be able to create some sexual tension between Nick and Kimmy. When Nick was old, he was more grandfatherly and I didn’t feel comfortable exploring any kind of romantic entanglement.

Nick as a young man is still to broken to “go there” but I wanted it to be on the table none the less. I liked the result as you have two damaged people who—had they met at different points in their lives—could have been together.”

Photoshop by Christal Rice Cooper 

Chris Rice Cooper’s Analysis on Kill Em With Kindness:

Nick Gillis is a widower still mourning the loss of his wife and their unborn child.  He’s also mourning the loss of his career, the loss of whatever prestige he had in the small Michigan town.  He has been able to maintain some sort of sane functionality but he is still plagued with memories so painful to revisit but yet he can’t help but caress what remains.

He traced his fingers over a series of photos that lined the hall to the master bedroom.  The affection soured and his fingers pulled the frames from the wall with such a nimble perfection.  It almost seemed as if that’s all they’d been made for, or perhaps the pictures fell from his caress, repelled by his touch. They were mostly photos of Grete and him.  Domestic shit he no longer wanted but didn’t have the energy to part with.

Nick continues to live in his own shell, safe from every one surrounding him, especially from the Lucifer-incarnate Chad Toll, who rules the small Michigan town with an iron fist with the help of his two demons of black dogs and two psycho ex-convicts Erik and Russell.  Nick manages to stay out of Chad Toll’s clutches, but all that changes when he sees Chad’s girlfriend Kimmy Flynn at the local bar.  

Photoshop by Christal Rice Cooper 

Her face was purple on the right side.  One eyelid stretched across her face, sealed tight and so swollen it looked like the slightest poke would burst it like an angry boil.  Her right arm was in a sling and she moved with a limp, trying to hide it and failing.

       But the most striking thing, aside from her not being with Chad, was the metal halo screwed into her head.

       Kimmy gets into an altercation with another girl and a violent fight ensues.  To prevent Kimmy from beating the girl to death and to save her from an arrest, Nick takes pity on Kimmy, separates her from the girl, and gives her a ride home. 

Nick later learns that Chad knows of his small but very successful marijuana business on the side, and he also knows that Nick gave Kimmy a ride home.   Chad and his two black dogs approach Nick at the local bar and he gives Nick a “choice.”  

       “Doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice.”

       Chad smirked.  “There’s always a choice, Nick.  Don’t fool yourself.  You got a choice.  You always got one.”  Chad stood from his chair.  “You make your choice by morning. I hate to rush a man through his chance to choose.  So go.  Use your time.  I got churches to burn.”

       The Horton Police Department Chief acting under Chad’s orders confronts Nick with a videotape of Kimmy claiming Nick raped her.  He also gives Nick a free 24-hour stay in the county jail.   Nick’s choice has already been made.

       What happens between Chad and Nick is not a friendship, a business partnership, or even a battle between two enemies, but an education on violence.    The remaining of the novel is a full-fledged sensory of violence against humanity, animals, oneself that Nick has never encountered or even thought existed. 

       “Git ‘em,” was all Chad said and then the dogs were on Hobo and it was messy as you’d expect.  Helpless was the only way to feel, and horrified, watching the pieces of Hobo as they practically fell away from his frame and into the hot gullets of the beasts.

                      Scene from "Djaigon Unchained" FUUS

Nick finds himself trapped in two worlds- The World of Violence and the World of Greater Violence – but he yearns for a world of no violence.  Nick learns that Kimmy feels the same way and both agree to a plot of the ultimate violence, in hopes of finding peace.

       In the process Nick and Kimmy develop an affection for one another – a friendship with a hint of romance, and, Nick finds himself in awe of Kimmy and her talents, which include communing with a flock of crows.

Photoshop by Christal Rice Cooper 

       Kimmy opened a jar and took a handful of quarters.  She looked at Nick, and flashed a smile.  “Watch,” she whispered and threw the quarters into the air.  For a moment they were lost against the blare flare of the sun, then just as quickly reappeared in the grass before vanishing again, this time beneath the beating of black wings.

Nick watched as more and more crows descended on the yard, each coin found and retrieved by different birds.  Nick sat dumbstruck as the birds, one by one, perched atop the wooden box and deposited the coins into a visible slot.  On the side facing Nick and Kimmy, near the bottom, a small amount of yellow meal corn flowed from around a hole, catching in a small plastic cup fixed to the box with duct tape. 

       Nick is not the only one who is in awe; Chad is in complete awe of Nick Gillis and respects him, not at all suspicious of Nick and Kimmy’s plans for him.

       “I said you’re good people and I mean it.  You took her home, no thought of who I was. Yea, she gave me some of the story and I pieced together the rest from those assholes who would have let Kimmy kill that girl.  You got a good foundation in you, Nick.  So it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s going to be good.”

       Only it isn’t good – in fact, it is very bad and very ugly.   So ugly that the reader will experience another sensory full of violence – even more vile and dark than the previous pages of the book – so disturbing it will make the hair on their necks stand straight up, and, coming to the end, their eyes widening with shock, their lungs gasping for breath.

Biography on CS (Chris) DeWildt

CS (Chris) DeWildt lives and writes in Tucson Arizona. His titles include Kill ‘Em with Kindness, Love You to a Pulp, Candy and Cigarettes, and a collection of short stories titled Dead Animals. He recently finished a new novel and is working on a prequel to Love You to a Pulp.  He has a wife, two sons, and a dog named Bernie.