Winner of the 2005 National Writers Union (Local 7) Contest chosen by ADRIENNE RICH

Dane's winning poem chosen by Adrienne Rich:

The Jeweled Net of Indra

Driving down the freeway, remembering Hindu mythology—

Indra’s net, each intersecting weave holding a jewel

reflecting every other facet of every other jewel, infinitely.

Suddenly, I see the hands that paint the white lines,

that lay the black asphalt, hands of a man joyous or lost

soap-scrubbing his body clean for dinner and beer,

for the wife who loves him, hands that hold their tickets

for London to see the grandmother, the hard-drinking

pub matron whose body bore children in building rubble

when the Nazi bombing relented—and if not for that war,

would I be driving now, hands on the wheel, listening

to the radio recount the birth of the child named Tsunami

after the storm that drove her mother into the hills,

would the meager dollars I send to rebuild a village—

minted with the Rosicrucian-eye above the pyramid

dreamed by this country’s founders as the all-seeing

vision of a world where not a sparrow falls

that we don’t know about—would I have known

to send it, if not for the hands that flew the kite

that drew electricity from the skies that made its way

into the flat-screened box that unveils this jewel-linked world

twenty-four hours of every gleaming day, weaving news

with advertisements for clothes made by hands in China

nimbly sewing a dream of Hollywood and Ipod and offering

their bodies one by one for a better future—

while the coal that fumes the electricity that plunges

the needle drifts in air that circles a globe that warms

the icecaps that melt into sea that shifts the current

that loves the wind that swirls from heaven to earth

stirring one storm after another, blowing

its diaphanous passion over New Orleans like a trumpet

sinking the heart so low with blue notes that flood

is a dark cure for what burns—this illusion

that anyone stands alone—stranded

on the roofs of our swollen houses mouthing

save me to a world whose  millions of hands

can turn up the volume loud enough to finally hear,

or flick with a single click the entire interconnected

vision of it all off.

Dane's poem chosen for Honorable Mention:

Holography

Coal country, West Virginia—I walk into a diner,

past the $100,000 reward poster in the window

for the sniper who shot Jeannie at the Speedway.

Our waitress—a poised old dame—

carries herself, effortlessly and without pride,

as the hidden center of a universe, and maybe

like Jeannie, she is, for someone. I open my book,

The Passion of Western Philosophy, wait for eggs,

bacon, biscuits, read about the Copernican revolution—

the earth no longer the center of things,

a peripheral sphere lost on the edge of an endless

black cosmos amid small blazing lights. Maybe

this is what Jeannie’s lover felt—the empty year

reeling out of orbit, no gravity, lost

in a centerless universe blown wide.

Then, like Nietzsche, killing his own god

in the bleak landscape of a world edged

on the abyss. But looking into the waitress’ eyes

as she says thanks hon for the extra tip,

I feel this universe circling back inside me—

Jeannie, her stalking lover, the beating

of a billion galaxies sounding here,

the thump-thump inside this chest,

the aching muscle at the heart of it all.