Meritage Press is delighted to announce the results of the 2006 Meritage Press Holiday Poetry Contest, judged by Michelle Bautista. The results:

First Place: “Atonement” by Joel M. Toledo
Second Place: “The foundress” by Ivy Alvarez
Third Place: “Contact” by Joel M. Toledo
Fourth Place: “Psalms on the Evening News” by Marie La Viña

Note that the First Place and Third Place poems are written by the same poet; this results from that the contest was judged anonymously — that is, based solely on the poems themselves. Meritage Press received many lovely poems for this year’s contest, and we also are delighted to recognize the other stellar finalists:

Finalists:
“Poet in Seven Days” by Cristina Querrer
“DEATH BY FREEWAY” by Lilledeshan Bose
”Driving, 1-80 Nebraska” by Kristin Naca
”Honey gatherers” by Ivy Alvarez
“Gray” by Alvin Malpaya
“Another Song about Death” by Alvin Malpaya
“Why I’m Not Afraid of Fire” by Marie La Viña

Judge Michelle Bautista has this to say about the poems:

1. “Atonement” - I really love how, when I read this, I suddenly find myself listening for the sound of crickets even in the middle of the city. And the last pair of stanzas that speak to a shared primal need.

2. “The foundress” - I love the transition between images and how the writer carries us from one to another, from splinters to paste to glasswings and prisms. The image of the hourglass at the end asking the reader to find the sense of time in the poem.

3. “Contact “- I love the relationship of the zoologist to the sedated wild animal, relating the animals fangs to his grandmother’s hands, a sense of fear, curiosity, excitement to face the wild animal with an intimate connection.

4. “Psalms on the Evening News” - I love the community created in this scene of the isolated insomniacs contemplating God. There is simultaneously attachment and disconnection.

Here are more information about the winning poets:

Joel M. Toledo has an M.A. degree in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, .where he also holds undergraduate degrees in Journalism and Creative Writing. He is a faculty at the Department of English of Miriam College, Quezon City. He was the 2nd prize winner of UK’s 2006 Bridport Prize for his poem, “The Same old Figurative”. In 2005, he won first prize for his poetry collection, “What Little I Know of Luminosity” in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. He was also awarded 2nd prize for his poetry entry in the 2004 Palanca Awards. Joel is the recipient of the 2006 National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Writers Prize for poetry, a grant for the writing and possible publication of his first book of poetry.

Ivy Alvarez is the author of Mortal (Washington, DC: Red Morning Press, 2006) and three chapbooks: ‘what’s wrong’, ‘catalogue: life as tableware’ and ‘Food for Humans’. She is also the editor of A Slice of Cherry Pie, a chapbook anthology of poems inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Her poetry appears in journals and anthologies worldwide and online.

Marie La Viña was a fellow of the 2004 Dumaguete National Writers’ Workshop and the 2005 UP National Writers’ Workshop. She graduated from the Philippine High School for the Arts in 2004 and spent the next two years figuring out what to do next. She is currently a freshman philosophy student at the Ateneo de Manila University.

We are pleased to share the winning poems:

First Place

Atonement
Joel M. Toledo

Where they are exactly, no one knows.
It is enough that they lie somewhere,
slicing the darkness with their sharp sounds.

Far off, in the cities, people are making do
with light and music and wakefulness.
Here, it is not so different. Only here,

the fireflies are satisfied with their nature,
their flickering envy of stars.
The same is true of the bullfrog,

announcing its presence by the pond,
and of the waiting owl, wide-eyed
and dark-winged and silent in the tree.

But the crickets, weak and ready
for the taking, are the boldest,
frantic with their unlinear music

as if they want to be found, as if
each singular blade of grass contains a single note,
contributes to the grand monotone of the evening.

Troubled and sleepless, I step out to look for them,
flashlight in hand. But outside there is only
the unblemished night, alive with its occasions of light,

harsh sounds, and the unseen crickets, nearby
and far away, mocking the frog, the owl, me.
As if their chorus is both for death and deliverance,

or simply because the night would be too silent
without their sacrifice. Eventually, they would
be discovered. Maybe not tonight, and maybe not

by me. This is the call of both the wild
and the human: our constant search for sources,
answers. Then again, there is the question

of God, our natural need to be heard, forgiven,
as these crickets–-noisy but perhaps
full of prayer, perhaps already redeemed.

*****
Second Place

The foundress
Ivy Alvarez

in these paper cells
some god writes through me
I cannot help myself

the six sides
and the half light
scratches

the dark
all my day
I am chosen

and I gather the wood to me
splinters in my mouth
the hoard I chew

and spit
chew
and spit

my little hands
form a poultice
I paste the walls together

grey paper
I may be writing history
with this copper body

there is beauty in my belly
my plated segments
my geometry

my glass wings
prismatic
there are hooks in my back

I marry
the days’ long drudge
to feed my young

the thin hum
of fear and love
I am the nest

suspended exposed
I birth and give of myself
I cannot count the cells

the small blind lives
break through daily
their thin membranes

deep into the catacombs
I go
there is an hourglass in me

the sky brings its sting
winter’s come
and all my shine dulls

*****
Third Place

Contact
Joel M. Toledo

To be sedated, handled with fingers,
the fear conquered and the animal harmless
like the ordinary orchids in the greenhouse,
its body just another thing to be tampered with.

I think of the young zoologist, his first time
in the field, lab work and books behind him,
hands calloused from too many chemicals.
How his body shudders now, this moment

with the animal of his wildest dreams.
It could be a lion, rhino, some poisonous snake.
It really doesn’t matter. He is caught
in this moment of pure closeness. He holds its paws,

hooves, wings, the pointed and useless fangs,
rough but firm like his grandmother’s hands,
as during that first trip to the zoo one summer,
a long time ago, before he forgot how

the sun exposes everything, alights gently
on the living or the dead, and how everything ends up
being touched, even the fierce ones, even this animal—
for now familiar, for now almost like family.

*****
Fourth Place

“Psalms on the Evening News”
Marie La Viña

So they say,
God will very soon be packing his bags for another universe.
It was on the news last night, and I allowed myself some nostalgia
When the network played a psalm we used to sing in church as kids,
Before I opened a can of beer and joined the consolable.
Like an invisible rain, I heard the world weeping outside my window.
No one slept. And to the grieving, the ghost appeared
In corners of window panes, a quiet light inside an empty glass.
We asked at dawn, “Is the godless air as good
for the lungs?”

People shouted his name in the streets, and there was no reply.
They fell to their knees. And there was silence.

Brothers, sisters,
your loneliness is dense as the atmosphere, warm as the ultraviolet.
Tell me, insomniacs, the teary-eyed among us: What does God know?
Has he ever worshipped anything?