PRINCEMERE POETRY PRIZE

 

Hockey in the City of God

        “the body, better than it was here in its best estate of health”
        Augustine, City of God 13.20

Unlike the lake and river now,
where crack, stick, snow patch,
tread-melt trip and slow
the skate blade, will you watch

the cicatrice on the dustless mirror
heal itself behind you? Ice gleam
as if untouched but for
the wind which swept it clean

of snow, banking the river
that perfect day you found it once,
a glorious Thanksgiving,
on the bend just out of town?

Or rather will nature be itself
renewed? To friction give its scar;
the body, its best estate of health
surpassed, from which not its power

but all need is taken, balanced,
singing on the blades; and action:
you wheel, slinging the puck
off the stick’s curved face, willing
time true, and each his own perfection.


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Gene Fendt of Kearney, Nebraska, has won the 2015 Princemere Poetry Prize for his poem "Hockey in the City of God."  The prize comes with a $300 award.

Commended were poems by Shannon Camlin Ward, Christell Roach, Sean O'Neill, Jenn Cavanaugh, Cheryl Pearson, Jill Munro, David Morgan O'Connor, and Joanne Monte.

Named finalists were poems by Linda Flaherty Haltmaier, James Croal Jackson, Meggie Royer, Paulo da Costa, Darrell Lindsey, Sydney Shavalier, Rachel Charlene Lewis, Anna Priore, Karen Craigo, Diana Woodcock, Joanne Rosenthall, Freya Jackson, Katherine Machan, Annie Christain, and Sarah Voss.

We are grateful to all who submitted.

The Editors

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