I know I usually have a more substantial post on Mondays, but I’m up to my alligators in asses this week and I really should have posted this Saturday, but, well, alligators . . .
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The Pink Cowgirl Pancake Hat of Win has spoken!*
But before I tell you what it said, I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the Short Poetry Contest—I was expecting great things from those of you who’ve joined the fun in past contests, but a lot of you opted to e-mail me this time, some for the first time,. A few of you even told me that your entries were the first poems you’ve ever shared with anyone, which was extremely cool and I’m honored.
All of you need to keep writing poems. Of any length.
Yes, you.
And I’m so glad that I set up these contests to avoid the impossible task of choosing the poems I like best, because you would still be waiting for a winner and I can’t afford a seventeen-way tie in this economy. It’s so much less stressful to use a grumpy pink hat and an obliging six-year old, though I did have to wait for Bubbleguppies to go to commercial.
The winner of the Short Poetry Contest is someone who doesn’t comment here, but has spent the last month or so trying to convince me that Thomas Hardy isn’t so bad** and tacked his entry in a PS at the end of his latest argument.***
But I’m letting him win, anyway—it does not pay to contradict the dictates of the Pink Hat of Win. So:
Congratulations, George D!
I just sent you your $10 gift card, which you are free to spend on Thomas Hardy’s poetry, if you must.
George gave me permission to share his poem. It’s a tad more Donne than Hardy, but maybe that’s why I like it.
Don’t know for whom tolls the bell,
So I wrote this poem, what the hell.
And thus, a poet is born . . .
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*Metaphorically, of course. If it could, ala its fictional Sorting Cousin, literally speak, it would be using foul language and hollering for a chiropractor and a hit of Oxycontin, not necessarily in that order, in the melodic tones of Harvey Fierstein. It’s now recuperating in my closet, where it is less likely to be stomped on.
**I know he’s not bad–he’s just really, really depressing.
***Which did, at least, get me to read “During Wind and Rain” again (please refer to the previous footnote).
Earful of Cider 