Editors' Note: We're pleased to present as a special feature this week two poems by Cherryl Floyd-Miller, winner of the Companion Poems Contest, sponsored by the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, Poetry Daily's neighbor in our non-virtual home, Charlottesville, Virginia. In addition to this online presentation, "Voodoo Chicken" and "Snake Oil" will be published as a letterpress broadside by the VABC.
Contest entrants were encouraged to send two poems that worked together as poems and would complement each other on the printed page. Entries could include two poems by the same poet or collaborations between poets. Nearly 200 entries from all over the country were received.
Finalists for the prize included: Kristin Abraham (Morgantown, WV); Kelli Russell Agodon (Kingston, WA) & John Davis (Bainbridge Island, WA); Brenda Barrows (Richmond, VA); Jessica Bozek (Athens, GA); John Casteen (Earlysville, VA); Michael Chitwood (Chapel Hill, NC) & Tom Andrews (deceased); Luisa A. Igloria (Norfolk, VA); Roy Jacobstein (Chapel Hill, NC); Carey McHugh (New York, NY) & Lytton Smith (New York, NY); JoAnna Scandiffio (San Francisco, CA).
The Virginia Arts of the Book Center is a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Watch the VABC website for details about the 2007 competition, Belle Letters, a broadside contest seeking poems that investigate alphabetical letters. Deadline: June 1, 2007.
Voodoo Chicken
Gots me hanker. Gots me squall, peeping tall-Tom
at your lovely, in your throat, and the itch,
hellcat itch, of it rides me like a witch
into the nights, those crafty nights, no calm
will come. You just a mule teeth puppet show.
Stop and go. Chickenhearted to the core.
You say don't cross the line or crack the door.
How sweetmeat, milk. How navy black. How crow.
But love has stayed and love is made, is all
is with, for. We almost did, just about,
said we (nohow) wouldn't (nungh-ungh) fall.
This moot jinx so far in, it's inside out.
We say we won't. But reckon do. Yak. Stall
for if. Wait for good-good. Gut in. Ass out.
Snake Oil
Clear water in the glass could be vodka or halcyon snake oil.
Hear daughter, the thud of chokecherries landing in rococo snake oil.
He squats on frangipani, croaks of three lids rubbed in Geechee salt.
Washed in deep river holy water, his teeth are polished with snake oil.
Hot memories slither cheeky to the schmooze bone. Run-run. Skip. Run.
What's got us now for dinner? Tilapia bone talisman dipped in snake oil?
He catches me by the tongue, my uvula bathed in his taste buds.
He unplugs my holler note, besa mis dobleces with snake oil.
Cock the Rooster watches from a corner as we swallow each other's words.
My feet have been his mother's. She cooks everything from scratch in snake oil.
His grandmother is in the lava lamp whose oil and water don't mix.
We heat. Green liquid bellies roll adagio through lemon chiffon snake oil.
We alcatraz to Marley bop and Badu, a spicy, speaker-blast scat
Tight in my thighs, a tissue burns. He rouses the flame with snake oil.
As he presses his breath into my face, I remember three other imagined times.
My Beloved is the Dog Star conjuring a whispery night sky with his snake oil.
You know my name: Cherryl: ecstatic ache: warbling thunder in a moonstorm.
Break me open like pomegranate; ripe flesh is bright seed in snake oil.
Cherryl Floyd-Miller
About the Poet
Companion Poems Contest
Virginia Arts of the Book Center
A program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
