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First-Ever vox Poetry Contest 2nd Runner-up: selling the family home


01.08.11 Posted in Contest 1, words to linger on by

Thank you to our guest judges Lisa Marie Basile (Caper Journal), Bryan Borland (Assaracus), Jessie Carty (Referential Magazine), and Brad Nelson (Eclectic Flash) for their tireless work in reading and ranking the 116 entries in the contest. They are the best and you should check out their publications! Much appreciation and admiration to all the writers who entered and congratulations to the winners who faced fierce competition.

First-Ever vox poetica Poetry Contest! Words to Linger on 2nd Runner-up:
selling the family home

By Kenneth Weene

the purple stain had become part of the pattern

something ignored by those who daily passed

only in my mind is it a memory of something so much more


we sat on pillows, our legs crossed, our hands fumbling for things to say

i wanted to hold and kiss you, but i was afraid that

you would not respond, that you … oh, the love of you


the music had been carefully chosen, soft jazz, piano

you had mentioned his name and i had listened

wanting so much to please you and so, so much more


we talked of school, the teachers we liked, kids we ignored,

and laughed at jokes we’d heard and quoted

snatches of songs as if there were secrets in poems


i had swiped a bottle of cheap burgundy

from the closet where my parents hid their secrets,

boxes of yellow photographs, and memories of youth


we poured two glasses, just half — the way adults

we had watched would do, swirled, inhaled

the cut-rate alcoholic fumes, laughed the way adolescents do


perhaps it was too much wine or too much more

the bottle upended, the wine spilled, the stain

my mother could not remove so we left


a remainder of youth embarrassed, of young love,

of someone i would never forget,

and of something so much, much more.


A stain, a Rohrschach test, an exquisite memory.

Kenneth Weene’s most recent poem to appear at vox poetica was At the Japanese garden.



One Response to “First-Ever vox Poetry Contest 2nd Runner-up: selling the family home”

  1. This was so easy to read and it brought memories of something one of my daughters did. Nice job.

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