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.
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