round 2 - winthrop-by-the-sea, september 4th
our words are: cough, mountain, calloused, trickle, recorder, sublime.
our poets are: owen, betsey, and alec hartford; mark and alex polizzotti; sadi ranson-polizzotti.
Waylaid - Betsey Hartford
Halfway through the Handel
The recorder player coughed
Her saliva trickled down her mouth
Like a brook from mountain loft.
Her calloused fingers fluttered
And she almost lost the time,
But sleeve to mouth she soldiered on.
The music was sublime.
Sublime Transformation - Owen Hartford
Her cough trickled down the mountain
into my recorder.
The calloused gurgles
I took home for erotic reorder.
The Valley - Alec Hartford
Snow trickles from the mountaintop
Forming a river, sublime in every curve
as it coughs over every rock.
The river sings
the valley walls are perfect
making the river seem calloused
for boulders dot the shore.
But I am a recorder, reporter!
For the glory of the mountainside.
He Took The Low Road - Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti
Those days leave me both
calloused and sublime. I sought
a peak on which to perch.
the higher ground of the mountain
a place where even your cough
would be eclipsed by the sound
of my recorder, echoed in
the trickle of the stream.
Coming Home - Alex Polizzotti
Two, four, seven hours pass,
I am on top of a mountain,
Flying above God himself as he
Stares up, jealous that I, not he,
Am in control of the universe.
I am sublime, beyond all worry.
The space of a cough, it ends, I fall.
Elation floats away in a slow trickle.
My skin hits the ground, home again,
Cut by the sharp, real rocks. I feel
Nothing--I am calloused now to
Numb this feeling--not that I am in a worse place,
But that there is a better place
That I was just in. I have no
Recorder to share feelings with.
This paper will do.
False Note - Mark Polizzotti
The recorder emits a triple cough
The soundtrack to his martyred face
Talk about a mountain from a molehill
Every time he shows his calloused fingers
You'd think he was offering the sublime wounds of Christ.
posted by sadi ranson-polizzotti @ 6:18 PM
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