Volume 15 - 1 edits.qxd - Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

FOUNDATIONACTIVITIES2004 Barbara Mandigo KellyAbout the AwardsThe Foundation is pleased toannounce the winners of the 2004Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace PoetryAwards. In 1995, the Foundationestablished this annual series of awardsto encourage poets to explore and illuminatepositive visions of peace andthe human spirit. The poetry awardsare offered in three categories: Adults,Youth 13-18 and Youth 12 & Under.The contest is open to people worldwide.For more information, includingthe 2004 honorable mention poems,previous years’ winners and the 2005Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace PoetryAwards guidelines, please visit theFoundation’s website at:http://www.wagingpeace.org/menu/programs/awards-&-contests/bmk-contest/index.htm1ST PLACE ADULT CATEGORYSloping WallsBy Colleen Dwyer-LulfHollyhock nodding against my grandmother’s houseBrushed on screens surrounding the porchWhere I sometimes bunked on hot summer nights.My uncle slept in the attic with sloping wallsThat tilted toward ragged quiltsMy grandmother made by hand.I was ten and he was seventeen when he became my hero.Not for something he had done, but just because he was so oldAnd wise in that way teenagers seem to children.He did not push me aside as I watchedHim paint curly-top flames (fire so beautiful it hurt)Arching from the front of his ‘52 Ford.Then my vacation over, I went home and he to Nam.There the North Dakota boy “Became a man”Intertwined with jungle rot and steamy swampsLike the hot, wet cloud that rose from his cup at a Saigon cafeAmid the chatter of their foreign talkAnd black lacquered dishes he sent home to Grandma.He didn’t tell her how the brains of one gookDried on his face like a gob of snotOr of the warm pee that washed pants in the foxholeOr the child who carried the exploding presentThat threw bits of men to rooftopsOr the gnarled hand of one old woman who reachedFrom the mass of flesh that had been her familyTo touch his dark, wet bootWhen he entered the sloping walls of her bullet-riddled hut.Instead, when he came home, he polished his car‘Till it mirrored the tossing trees above, clouds, birds,And his own black eyes behind the patterned flames.Colleen Dwyer-Lulf16 Waging Peace Report