Congratulations to 2008 KAKALAK editors Beth Cagle Burt, Lisa Zerkle, and Richard Allen Taylor on the release of this year's anthology, the third in the series of Kakalak: Anthology of Carolina Poets. Each year the editors hold a poetry and art contest--putting out a call for poetry and art submissions from North and South Carolina poets/artists, and from other poets/artists with work about the Carolinas. Poet Colette Inez served as judge for the poetry competition this year. 2008 Kakalak includes the results of this year's contests, as well as a special section of work by poet and photographer Steve Lautermilch, winner of both contests last year.
This year's cover art, Watertrees, is by Patz Fowle; and, as always, the anthology is a beautiful book. It contains the work of more than a hundred poets and about twenty visual artists. Copies can be ordered at the anthology's website: Kakalak
I'm extremely pleased to be included again in the new edition, doubly pleased that my poem received an honorable mention in the poetry contest:
Whistling through My Hands
Until today, the dove's cry hasn't come
from so deep inside itself since that summer
Emily stepped from the curb into the night's traffic.
She, the troubled bright wonder in our class.
This moment, straight through me because out here
I'm closer, my ear a vessel of sorrow?
I want to carry that sound into fall. No, winter.
The morning I read her obituary
I went to Paul, our teacher.
Found him in his office and sat there numb
while he cried, that big man at his desk,
his plastic black cat clock behind him on the wall.
Now Paul gone too. I have to remind myself.
If I hollow my hands, clasped together
into the shape of the church
without the steeple, or the people,
line up my thumbs just so,
I can blow on them to make that long, low call
I practiced and practiced as a child, till finally
when it came to me, it came to me by heart.
for Paul Rice
