Poetry: Omnidawn Chapbook Contest Finalists

Shannon Tharp
Erin Wilson
Jackie Clark
Kate Schapira
Robin Powlesland

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Poem Without Door

by Shannon Tharp

There’s a bird sounds like

a hinge in

the early morning,

a transmission turn-

ing over

and over to fail

as the sun proceeds

to rightly

cut into the room

in which paint and its

gradations

level our waking.

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Shannon Tharp is the author of the chapbooks Each Real Bird (Elliott Press, 2006) and Determined by Aperture (Fewer & Further, 2008). Her first full-length collection of poems, The Cost of Walking, is forthcoming from Skysill Press in Fall 2010. She grew up in Wyoming, earned degrees from Drake University and the University of Washington, and lives in Seattle, WA.

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from Break-Night Dawn

by Erin Wilson

found here

the wings too have yellow on top

the bird is so busy

what can there be to do

all the time, he is alone

flying between 4 branches

a sort of perimeter

is he warning me about

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Erin Wilson’s poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologized in Hinge: A BOAS Anthology (Crack Press, 2002) and Kindergarde (a Small Press Traffic project, 2011). She is the co-founder, with Zoey Kroll, of Pocket Seed Library, a community seed-saving and picnic advocacy organization that has had installations at Southern Exposure, Frankenart Mart and Hayes Valley Farm. She is a librarian and lives in Berkeley.

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Sea Change

by Jackie Clark

The moon is the moon

and opulent dates and shaved coconut line the street

and the month is still summer

and everyone is watching the same yellow ball,

its force echoing its force echoing its force

and even the nosebleeds sell out

and it must be so difficult to be a carriage,

all the rolling, all the stairs and 24 hours of car horns and stereos

and the couch and the window and

I’ve been waiting for what seems like a really long time

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Jackie Clark is editor-in-chief of LIT magazine.  She is also the series editor for Poets off Poetry, on coldfrontmag.com.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from RealPoetik, Poor Claudia, and Forklift, Ohio, among other places.  Her chapbook Office Work is forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press.  She lives in Jersey City and blogs occasionally atnohelpforthat.wordpress.com.

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The Love Life (for Mary Braga)

by Kate Schapira

keys eyes nights silence fountains

a loose lip then a lip latch

it had a high false front of hair

it also was an animal with its animal past

walking slowly behind it

sometimes it looked for excuses

teeth and nails were other options

for seconds at a time it worried

about its spreading shape then forgot

saying to itself, “I’m wayward,”

coiling through the groins of humans

it found no shelter

its wrist looped and trailing

a blister on its dominant hand

cradling a familiar pose

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Kate Schapira is the author of TOWN (Factory School, Heretical Texts, 2010), The Bounty: Four Addresses (Noemi Press, forthcoming 2011), and several chapbooks with Flying Guillotine Press, Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Cy Gist Press, Rope-A-Dope Press and horse less press, as well as her own kitchen-table imprint, In Hand Books. She runs the Publicly Complex reading series in Providence, RI.

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330 Cedar

by Robin Powlesland

you colored the night

spread fresh strawberries into my teeth

washed the scent of mint and lemon

into these chairs and cushions

I wanted to open and inherit

go underground and mine the rough cut

phrases from the witnessed

checkered tables and cantaloupe

discharged for the night into my red red skin

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Robin Powlesland teaches writing at the University of New Mexico-Taos, where she lives amongst hollyhocks and 6ft tall sunflowers. She is the author of the locally produced chapbook,Double Shot Straight.