2002 KSU Poetry Winners

Tiffany Kentile

Crow

Caaw caaw

on a telephone wire, thirty feet up

a scavenger, loud and burdened with lice

looks down on me. I’m forged in God’s image,

yet the foul feathered one looks down on me.

Oh, to have hollow bones! I tolerate

your laughter for quite sometime, while I stand

slouching, crushed by my anchor--gravity.

Caaw caaw

Erin Billing

From a Beijing Taxi

Are you airen?

The driver grinned

in the mirror

to see us shrug and squirm

under the weighty name

of “lovers.”

You, nervous and hopeful, glanced

at me, a swift, secret

sideways step of the eyes

I couldn’t match.

Dirty red cars raced beside us

coughing clouds of murky

metal-toned exhaust. I turned and

squinted against the smoke

and late afternoon sun, squinted

to see the

slow steady feet of the man

who has been riding that bike

in the same narrow dusty gutter

for years.

About the Prize Winners:

Tiffany Kentile is the co-winner of the 2002 Touchstone Kansas State Contest for Poetry. She

received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Keuka College in New York, and has been published in Red Jacket.

Erin Billing is the co-winner of the 2002 Touchstone Kansas State Contest for Poetry. She is a first-year graduate student at Kansas State. She just returned from teaching at South Ocean International School in Taiyuan, China. She has previously been published in Touchstone.

Last updated April 24, 2003