PoemBowl 2!

Here we go, another installment in the ongoing search for quality portfolio submissions. Remember: you get to choose what poems I'm sending to grad schools. You hold my academic fate in your hands!


So I got a couple responses on the last PoemBowl entry, it looks like "Animals After the Fall" is the clear victor 2-0 over "Good and Perfect Gifts." (I think it's the sex in the latter that destined it for failure...)


Here's the next installment, a head-to-head match-up that makes USA vs. England look like... Botswana vs. Monaco? I'm told there's some Cup o' the World going on, I don't follow these things. "The Astronomy of Repentance" is a tanka, "In the Quiet" has no formal structure. I pitted them against each other partially because they're so short, but they also have some indefinable quality that links them in my mind. Hope you enjoy one or both - but just choose one.

The Astronomy of Repentance

Matt Quarterman

I have a world-sin 
juggernaut, a wandering star
black as film-noir:
drifting, haunting nebulae.
Christ! I fear it’s unconfessed.

In the Quiet

Matt Quarterman

I’m waiting for something, but I think
the waiting is what I’m waiting for.
I’m listening in the silence, but the silence
is what I’m waiting expectantly, hoping to hear.
The stillness and the passing of time
are also things to taste and touch.
And if the taste is tasteless,
the touch unfeeling,
this is just the taste of water,
the touch of air.
To feel the flavor of water on your tongue,
to let your skin prickle in the grip of air
is to tune your senses finely,
to calibrate them to the highest power.
So I wait silently and let the still time
be the thing I wait for in the quiet,
in the dark.

Make the call: click here to choose the winner!