The judges have made their decisions and the winners of the second annual CALL FOR PAPERS contest are…
Nonfiction:
FIRST PLACE – Michelle Blair, post-bac student, "Bend in the Road," memoir, (the following is an excerpt)
"… As I leaned out over the cage, I felt the truck lurch forward. I looked up to see Bart, the driver, in the long side-view mirror squinting his small blue eyes and smirking at me through his brown goatee and mustache. The job itself was never challenging enough to keep these guys occupied. For his part, Bart added interest by popping the clutch each time I leaned out to drop a cone. I responded with a quick glare toward his mirrored reflection, then hung on tighter and resolved not to lose my balance. After several similar jolts, Bart realized he wasn't going to knock me off the truck. The engine groaned as he switched gears. The pavement moved faster beneath my feet. I grabbed cones and hurled them onto the roadway. Eventually, I couldn't match Bart's pace and cones starting spinning off in all directions, toppling into the construction zone and out toward moving traffic. Bart slowed to a stop, still smirking in the mirror, and next to him in the truck cab, I could hear Old Man Jack's coarse laugh and Colgate's higher pitched chuckle. I quickly learned that being in the female minority meant I had to work a whole lot harder than the men to even have them consider treating me as an equal…"
SECOND PLACE – Kyle Cassidy, first-year nonfiction student, "Hunting Andy Sorenson," memoir
"…Andy was a slow runner. In PE class it took him upwards of fifteen minutes to finish a mile. He wasn't overweight or lazy, simply inhibited by his legs, which were long and thin and constructed with the solidity of noodles. At any given time they were prone to tangle around one another and send him falling to the ground where he would yell loudly as he rolled into a high-jump pit or stack of hurdles. Not particularly fast or particularly slow and being prone to fits of laughter and farting on the track, I ran an average seven-to-nine-minute mile. Shaun was more focused and built for speed. He could run it under six. I had no doubt that on the unpredictable terrain of the steppe we would catch Andy before he reached the safety of suburbia…"
THIRD PLACE – Kathy Haynie, second-year nonfiction student, "Three Ways of Looking at a Blackberry," collage essay
"… The air in the kitchen wraps itself around me in a steamy, sticky blanket. Spilled sugar on the floor makes the bottoms of my shoes squeak as I walk from stove to table, cradling the hot jars of blackberry jam. The pot on the stove bubbles like some weird mud pot. The ding! of the timer. The hiss of the steam. The fragrant blackberries, cooking themselves into jam…"
Fiction:
FIRST PLACE – Kathy Haynie, second-year nonfiction student, "Halcyon Days"
"… June afternoons on the central California coast last forever. The sun arcs slowly overhead, gulls wheel and call, the breeze picks up out of the northwest and whips the sand ankle-high along the beach, and whitecaps glisten beyond the breakers. A man sated with sandwiches and peaches, drowsy from a nap on the beach blanket, even a man who hardly knows his own children anymore, may yet be persuaded to roll up his pant legs and wade into the surf. So there stood Fred Tarbox, pants rolled up to the knee, jacket doffed but still wearing his shirt and vest, grinning like an idiot as his daughters in their bathing dresses pranced and splashed in the surf. Helen and Virginia, only one year apart and set to graduate high school together in a year, played and flirted with their father, while Joseph, just a year behind the girls, dove and surfed like a seal in the waves…"
SECOND PLACE – Elizabeth Lopeman, fiction student working on thesis, "Manaccan"
"…In the morning, July sunshine poured onto the octagonal white tiles in the Albia house kitchen. When Jocelyn came in Juliette stood at the counter by an east facing window with half an orange in her hand, eyes closed, as if giving silent consent to the sun to kiss her face. Opening her eyes, she said "Good Morning, Lamb," and then pressed the orange down onto the automatic juicer, the ascorbic scent permeated the kitchen. Jocelyn pulled out a bag of coffee beans from the freezer. Except for the buzz of the coffee grinder and the hum of the juicer they went quietly through their morning rituals.
Around ten am Jocelyn pulled out of the driveway. As she crawled past the gatehouse she saw Ben coming out the front door. He raised his hand as if to stop her. She raised hers as if she understood him to be saying hello, and kept driving…"
THIRD PLACE – Amber Beaman, first-year fiction student, "Eddie's First Story"
"The fan spun around and around. Eddie stretched out his arms and legs, letting his body make a big X on his mother's queen-sized bed.
The coolness from the ceiling fan fell over his body like a crisp and rare Florida snow. He was free, finally. Divorced, officially. Di-vor-ce-d. Eddie mouthed each syllable, letting each dance past his teeth and off his tongue.
His own man.
Single.
A widower. That would've sounded better than divorced. Divorced sounded like his wife, ex-wife, didn't want him anymore. He was only thirty-two, after all, and there was nothing wrong with him…"
Poetry:
FIRST PLACE – Shannon Carson, second-year poetry student/second-time CFP winner, "What Passes for Yes in Hangul Sounds Like the English No"
1.
There is this thing
that happens,
that occurs
in the margins—
a sort of alchemy
of words,
a conspiracy
of language,
and the original
is changed.
One cannot
trust what is given.
2.
Call it tissue
and it means
no regret
Call it regret
and it means
traitorous bitch
Call it what it was
necessarily painful
a mere possibility
a galaxy of blood.
SECOND PLACE – Chris Cottrell, first-year poetry student, “Maui Snow”
carried by tradewind
from the nail
stuck at valley
center
long black ashes fall
from early blue sky
and roll along
the morning breeze
into sticky spider corners
and the cracks
of new hotels
the flat
head spreads
south
into kihei
wailea
into young lungs
sinking yellow haze
follows the long
curls
that spin
through
narrow streets
to crouch
around
the mouths
of doorways
and seep
through hurricane
window slats
long forgotten caramel
on the stove
THIRD PLACE – Patrick Haas, second-year poetry student, “Interlude for Kitchen”
I smashed your hourglass
and watched ants carry time
back through tiny holes in the wall.
Congrats to all the winners and thanks to everyone who participated. We had nearly 40entries! A reading by the winning writers will be announced shortly.
Also thanks to our judges, Brian Doyle (nonfiction), Mariam Gershaw (fiction) and B.T. Shaw (poetry).
About the judges:
Brian Doyle is the author of The Grail: A Year Ambling and Shambling through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World (Oregon State University Press), The Wet Engine (Paraclete Press) and five collections of essays. Doyle's work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's,
American Scholar, Orion and in the Best American Essays anthologies of 1998, 1999, 2003 and 2005. He is editor of Portland magazine, the publication of the University of Portland, in Oregon.
Miriam Gershow's stories have appeared recently in Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, and Gulf Coast. She was awarded a 2006 Oregon Literary Fellowship through Literary Arts in Portland and the 2002–3 James C. McCreight Fiction Fellowship through the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.
B. T. Shaw edits the poetry column for The Oregonian and teaches writing and literature at Portland State University and the University of Portland , as well as through writers-in-the-schools programs. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, FIELD, Orion, Poetry Northwest, Seattle Review, and elsewhere. This Dirty Little Heart (2008) is her first book.
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