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Contests : Margaret Reid Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2008 : Most Highly Commended
OLD MEN, SMOKING
You can see them standing singly or in clusters on street corners
Or sitting, calm as toads, in quaint but seedy coffee bars,
These old men who smoke and don't speak English.
They stare into the distance, seeing the drowning
Of the Titanic, the Lusitania, some obscure Estonian ferry,
Experiencing the wash of history. It leaves them clean,
Weathered, their eyes turned that strangest of blues by the sea,
The wind, the turning of years. These old men who smoke
And don't speak English—they know all the secrets of the universe,
Revealed to them in each glowing ember that flies away
From their mouths into the world. These old men—descendants
Of Prometheus, who, having stolen fire, passed it down through the ages
To old men who never grow older or die. They are immune
To cancer, to weather, to the voices of women. They simply smoke,
Cast embers into air, into history, mutter in foreign tongues
No matter what country they are in. These men with their gnarled
Gardeners' hands never really smile, never really see you,
But you know them, know them from past incarnations,
From memory, from myth. Maybe they do smile, inwardly, secretly,
At our mad scurryings and busy bodies. Such guileless crocodiles!—
Sitting, steadying the tilting world; smoking, obscuring the truths
We cannot bear to know; humming in the voices of God.
This poem won a Most Highly Commended award in the 2008 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Author Sandra Kasturi received a $100 award. Winning Writers assists this contest. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Sandra Kasturi
Sandra Kasturi is a poet, writer and editor, as well as co-creator of a kids' animated TV series. In 2005 she won ARC magazine's annual Poem of the Year award. She is the poetry editor of ChiZine and the Senior Editor of ChiZine Publications. Sandra has written three poetry chapbooks and has edited the poetry anthology, The Stars As Seen from this Particular Angle of Night. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, TransVersions, On Spec, several of the Tesseracts series, 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology, and Northern Frights 4. Her cultural essay, "Divine Secrets of the Yaga Sisterhood" appeared in the anthology Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Slayers, Mutants and Freaks. Sandra is a founding member of the Algonquin Square Table poetry workshop and runs her own imprint, Kelp Queen Press. She managed to snag an introduction from Neil Gaiman for her first full-length poetry collection, The Animal Bridegroom (Tightrope Books).
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