This is a show of small affordable art work. Come and shop for Holiday gifts for your family and friends.

Weekends through Sunday, December 16 at GALA Arts Gallery
135 Front Street, Winchendon, MA

Friday night the finalists read their poems to the public and the judges announced the winners. Congratulations to everyone who had entered and to the winners!

First Place: Susan Middleton

 

 
Crossing Tidewater Basin After Visiting Mom in the Hospital

Flat land leaves me uneasy-
no mountains, no hills, nothing to break
the horizon, like a streak of phosphors
sliding across a dark screen:
EKG's mosquito whine at life's end.

Give me the lively jerks and twitches
that a rocky bluff makes against an ocean sky,        
or a ridgeline of trees' tufted profile-
as reassuring to the eye
as heartbeat rhythms to the ear:
Come walk here, invites the hillside.
The edge is thrilling, calls the promontory.

Even treeless prairies, shaped by the long-ago
press of a glacier's frigid tongue,
are not cold to the eye
but warm as the breath of life-
Grasses ride waves of rolling earth
like whales emerging from the sea
to arc, then nose down below:
Slow but not still.
Quiet but for their huge breathing.

  Second Place: Barbara Lemoine

 

 

  Instructions for Sleep

Do not read Andre Breton before you go to bed
when you cannot sleep during a navy blue night.
His words won't help you. Word jumbles
will fill your mind like taking one of Alice's bottles
that say "drink me" and you do,
landing somewhere you never were before
and will never be again, and yet everything
seems familiar as if you always lived there.

Lived there with white curtains with pink eyelets
that once moved in a summer breeze,
with a tea kettle that whistles but the arm
that raises the spout's lid is broken but
you use it anyway because it belonged
to your aunt who died four decades ago
and still you ask her questions, waiting
for her answers to appear in the flowers.

And words that don't belong together
lash themselves to the mast of a frigate
sailing around the Cape of Good Hope
to start a family before waves capsize the ship
and the angels of the morning never appear.

Third Place: Elaine Reardon

 

 
Hye Holiday Gathering

Gram prepared paklava and bourma
without a written recipe. Like a newly
hatched bird I'd wait for a bits of sweetness
to fall, walnuts covered with cinnamon,
honey mixed with lemon. I stood on a stool
to watch. Before me Hrpesima, Anoush, Mariam had
mixed the dough and rolled it by hand, but when I was six
we bought it in thin sheets from Sevan's Market in Watertown.

Gram melted butter in the cast iron skillet.
Don't let the butter sizzle-too hot!
She mixed sugar and cinnamon in a bowl for me to add
then got out the heavy rolling pin and I crushed
walnuts beneath its weight. Gran said be sure
the nuts are ground fine! Grind them again-
still too big. I pushed the rolling pin hard against
walnuts, then we mixed in sugar and cinnamon.

We took one layer of phyllo at a time,
brushed with melted butter, sprinkle in nuts,
then rolled as quickly as we could.
Finally, using the sharpest blade,
we sliced the fragile rolls and
placed them on the cookie sheet.
Gram's were straight and long,
mine crinkled, like thin fabric.

I have the recipe still, yellow with age,
thin and tattered, like phyllo dough,
filled with handed down memories from those
who sat at this table before me- Shushan, Bedros,
Kevon, Katchador, Sitanoush, still cooking
to honor our homeland no longer on the map.
Now I'm the old one. When I cook,
grandmother's voice follows me, step by step.

The 8 Finalists

We hoped you enjoyed these poems. If you would like to share your poems in our monthly newsletter, email them to debgiordano59@comcast.net.

Saturdays:  12:00 - 4:00 pm
Sundays:  12:00 - 4:00 pm

We need volunteers to keep the gallery open. If you wish to volunteer to be a Gallery Sitter please view our calendar for available time slots and email Georgia Griffin at  gkg@georgiagriffin.com.