Two poems by Curtis Rogers, third place winner,
The College Alumni Society Prizes, 2009

Anger / Grass

The fields
    refused weeks of decay, the soil
bent like knuckles into the air -
     pregnant and inconsolable. In those

hot months, you found our son pulling feathers
     out of a hen in handfuls, twice,
his face wet with surprise
     and mud caught on his jeans.

The fields pulled the shadows
     from the clouds and heavy
planes that rolled through our sky until
     they became soaked and soft.

They raised flowers from the
     bones of our wheat, petals
smooth as fingernails and violently
opened, like ports to the wind.

You found me offering my black half like a gift
     to the clouds and sky and machines,
those that strayed and shook but could
     no longer cool the bright face of

anything below themselves.
     It had returned to us, the new year,
in a wind that stirred like
     anger through rows of empty stems.



There Will Come a Point


at one point it will be over
and the grains of your movement
and growth will be collected
into one glimmering period
around the warm mouth
of empty space.

you, your brothers, your fat
wife, best friends, Shakespeare,
creatures whose color we only
can guess at, all the clichés
and all the surprises, flying cars,
pornstars and camp counselors
will be laced together like a
beach curving endlessly into
itself.

then it will all seem like
a great joke, the preposterous
idea of an end. and the value
of our lives will make us
laugh and laugh and laugh.