The Holidays took up much of our time so, for our January entry, we're basically reprinting information from Eileen Tabios's Chatelaine Poetics Blog to feature January's Featured Poet: Sarah Gambito!

SARAH GAMBITO, WINNER OF THE ALICE JAMES POETRY COMPETITION

The Chatelaine ... just received a missive from the lovely, young poet Sarah Gambito. Sarah's manuscript MATADORA , over which the Long Lashed One long had been cooing over for several years, has just won the New York competition for the Alice James Books Annual Poetry Prize.

In fact, the Chatelaine had chosen Sarah to be the inaugural featured poet -- in January 2001 -- for her Publishers' Column on Filipino Literature, "Babaylan Speaks," hosted at the Meritage Press website. She knew it would be a matter of time before others would come to appreciate Sarah's work -- and now Sarah has won the same Poetry Prize that had enabled another friend, Eric Gamalinda, to achieve his first U.S.-published poetry book, Zero Gravity .

The Chatelaine ... decides to share a poem from Sarah's winning manuscript (a poem first published in The Antioch Review -- Congratulations Sarah!:

The Glitter Lamb

At the mere hint of doubt, he would push aside his
plate and say:
“This meal has been prepared without love.”
-- Love in the Time of Cholera

I

How I wanted to see us: naiad and nathan
and proud for somebody.

Here's another story:

II

We found an elegant girl.
Some say she was a cornfield.
I say she was a sword in a cornfield.
The swordsmen say she was a girl and the sword did not
save her.

What are the endings that bring in the bacon?
How I want to work for them.

“Hello special.”

I won't tell you that.
sotto voce I won't tell you that.

“Give me the name of an actress you hate,” you said.

III

I'll show you that she never gave you up.