THE FIRST POETRY PRIZE WINNER –
WINTER 2020 – 2021
is DAVID ALLARD
of London, England – UK
“THANKSGIVING”
Some fine citizen took my food stamps and sat me down on this torn red banquette – eat all you can for four dollars ninety-nine –
where I could gorge and gobble on deep-fried chicken and Doctor Pepper.
Outside, desert winds whistle howl and call to the living and to the gone equal.
My credit card is gone and my cell phone is dead – my hair is dyed satin and my nails are deep red
The TV skulks in the top corner, colour TV, silently shows football and baseball –
I can stare it out any time I want till the time comes for peach cobbler and soft white ice cream,
then I’ll bide a while outside where moons orbit distant stars.
The Anti-Christ is waiting, rubbing grey dust in the cracks and crevices of his Satanic Face. He claims he’s my husband full of God’s Grace and that I’ll go with him, as surely I must.
I’m thinking how once I was seated like the very Queen of Saskatoon
right in the front in the show window of the finest diner in town.
My china skin and my mysterious smile drew them like flies buzzin’ on a newfound corpse.
Now I wait and I pray, my mind whirling circling nowhere,
wild waves on an empty shore waiting for the Good Lord to fill my soup bowl to fix my soul.
Strangers would die just to dance with me in the cold orange-lit night,
their grins frozen like a cracked windshield and I’d twirl and say:
I’ll see you at the run-off at the rodeo next Thanksgiving Day.
Then the water came crashing down as heavy as the lead-lined sky
and filled every canyon with its foaming fierce rush –
washed out my home and my dreams, cleaned my spirit out clear to Kayenta,
past the Green River to Mexican Hat.
As I climb the naked hill home dogs yelp and rush each chain mail fence.
I will howl with them later, at the yellow moon.
By David Allard
