Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Runner-up - Marlene Rosen Fine

Marlene Rosen Fine, who was chosen as one of the runners-up in the 2007 Cardiff International Poetry Competition, grew up at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn—a borough of New York City.  She walked this beach while reciting poems by Walt Whitman and Dylan Thomas. She has written stories and poems, published in anthologies and literary magazines and won a few prizes. She has shared her poems with family and friends and has read in galleries, pubs, coffee houses and bookshops. At twenty-two, while attending graduate school at the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, she opened, with her husband, Michael J. Fine, The Paper Place bookstore. They returned to New York City to continue their lives with books and writing and a family. Currently, she writes poems and works as Acquisitions Editor at MJF Books, Fine Creative Media. Their publishing company develops and produces the Barnes & Noble Classics.

 
Hello                         

hello  to the new use of my teeth.
I bite to hold a thing in place.
My right hand learns techniques
for acting alone while my left’s blank face
rests on my lap so hello hello hello

My left hand, gradually retired from its long  expertise,
now wiggles on my swinging wrist as I walk.
hello  to hair cut short—no braids nor French
twists—pins & combs all given away.

hello  laceless shoes.  Slip-ons & Velcro suffice.
hello  rocking knife that cuts my steak
and hello  to slanted plates with lifted rims to sweep
the corralled peas against.  hello  knees so versatile
which clasp the emery board or the package whose seal
I cut with my sharpest scissors which also shreds with style
the lettuce in the salad bowl.

And here’s my new penmanship: a scrawl
unreadable but as good a beginning as when
I was five with the pen.

hello to right hand typing, to playing only
the piano’s upper melody.

hello  to trousers zippered in the front,
to pockets only on the right,
to shoulder purses—-
hello  to aubergine bruises when, unprotected, I fall.

To the manicurist buffing my right hand, half price,
to the tailor for one sewn-on button,
to driving with my right hand steering,
to the silence of one hand clapping at the show while
clappers around me rise and rise
and I shout, able to offer only my smile.

hello  to swimming; I count “one” for the empty stroke
as my left arm dangles down and “two, three”
for my right arm, over, under.

hello to dancing (which I love) as my left arm flies
out of control and I whisper to him to hold it
hide it  and he does, saying hellohello  love.
Love, hello. Hello.