Today, Mon. 19 March 2012 we shall be holding
the prize giving ceremony for the winners of
The Bernice Sheffer Bessin Poetry Competition;
4 - 5pm in the Raymond Health Professions Building, the Fabian -Cyril Boisson Auditorium.
For Bernice Bessin - Professor Karen Alkalay-Gut
Sometimes you don’t know where to go
Because you don’t know someone who has gone
Where your heart wants you to be.
At my age there are few models
Of old ladies who continue
To follow dreams – in words,
In the world – who make rhymes
From their love of living.
And share it with generations to come.
Immigration one - Nadja Rumjanceva
Little things give you away.
It is not stamped on your forehead
that you used to feel at home on wheels.
It does not ooze through your casual clothes
that you shared your first menses with your mother, father and two brothers,
cramped on ten square meters in a fugitive camp.
You don’t even think of these days – here, in the soft light of candelabra.
Do you?
Against the velvety touch of your jacket, the rusty sun of older days
fades into cheap documentary.
When dinner is over, you pick breadcrumbs from your plate
and quick motions of the fork gather the last drops of balsamico.
Also, at night you dream of roads.
Start - Roman Filikovsky
It is dress like a pirate day; so, I step beyond myself,
realizing legs and arms, breast and backbone, knee caps, feet, fingers and hearts. This
is a terrible sun day, as I assume my positions inside time
separating, even as we speak
I watch you are as beautiful as misconstrued body parts asking
we have slept long. I say it is one year or one hundred thousand years and I cannot remember. I ask, how do I look and you look merry.
It is enough to make my muscles move.
