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The winners and work from the SFR writing contest.
For many, the holiday season is a time of pine trees, snowflakes and biscochitos. For SFR interns, it's the time when they are asked to photocopy hundreds of writing contest entries, with a warning that a misplaced page or mistapled manuscript is cause for termination.
As always, entries were plentiful, entertaining and with only one exception, all entrants followed our elaborate instructions! For the first time, the number of fiction entrants beat out poetry, even though all fiction writers had to come up with a way to use the term "Mercury in Retrograde" in their stories (and very few used astrology to do it. Brava!).
This week, readers will find out who the winners were. In addition, we have published all the poetry winners, the first and second place non-fiction winners and the first-place fiction piece. In subsequent weeks, the remaining pieces will appear in our pages. As always, thanks to our judges for their help: Poet Miriam Sagan, essayist Rob Wilder and fiction writer and teacher Marika Brussel.
And the winners are…
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Fiction:
First Place
"Picture Up"
James Rosenfield
is the producer and host of Cinematalk on KSFR on Fridays from 5:20 to 6 pm. He is a TV news journalist for NBC and
Entertainment Tonight
and a former film producer, as well as a location manager for films such as
On Golden Pond
and
Carny
.
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Fiction:
Second Place
"High Jump"
Polly Nell Jones
was the recipient of the 2003 Southwest Writing Center Discovery Prize for Fiction, although she currently is a resident of Northern Virginia. A freelance writer, her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Fine Gardening and the Cleveland Plain Dealer among others. She has completed a novel and a collection of short stories, both unpublished. She is looking for an agent! Currently she designs small garden spaces and is working on a second novel. She has two daughters and two grandsons. She and her husband have recently purchased a home in Santa Fe.
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Fiction:
Third Place
"The Loveliest and Best"
Patricia Scalzi
has won this contest twice before and wishes everyone Peace on Earth.
Fiction writers in this year's contest had no assigned topic. They were, however, required to use the words "Mercury in Retrograde," "Tia Sophia's" and "Chinese Elm" in their stories.
First Place
Picture Up
BY JAMES ROSENFIELD
I'm on my way to Malibu on the 10 heading west to PCH when I round the curve of the McClure tunnel and boom, that view of the ocean and the sparkling coastline opens up and I say to myself, this is why I live in L.A. It's for days like this.
I can groove on it too. Because I work outside. Not like those office mooks in Century City. "Score a studio gig," a buddy of mine told me when I first came out to the Coast. "They pay you way too much. And most of the time, it's just hang time. Everyone's doing lunch or taking a meeting." He got that right. But what did he know? He ended up directing a low-budget feature, walked head first, straight into the tail rotor of the chopper he was using to shoot a stunt. Long day. Magic hour. Had the whole crew chasing a dusk shot. Typical director behavior. Their only reality is their own reality. He bought it good. I don't need that kind of grief. I'm a team player. Don't mind doing my small part, hanging it up at night and seeing what's on the platter for tomorrow. I don't worry about little gold statues or where they seat me at Morton's. Or who returns my phone calls. Don't need the headaches, don't need the hassles. I'm in, I'm out. Onward and upward. Next.
Beach Boys are on the radio, "Don't Worry Baby," as I make the hard left just before Zuma onto Westward Beach. I check the Thomas guide because these roads get all squirrely out here. Then I see it revealed in all its glory. The great-white, Po-Mo trophy crib. Camera ready. Views, three-sixty all the way to Catalina and back. Slabs of green glass in every mixed-up angle. Topiary out of early
Star Trek
. A real geometry experiment. I'm thinking drug-lord castle. Iranian Vice. The classic in your face showcase. And I'm saying to myself whoever built this monstrosity, I hope when he dies, he donates his ego to science. The gate is locked, so I hop the fence, check out the reflecting pools, scan the koi. They got the requisite Benzes and Beemers, the stink-ugly Hummer, chilling in their six-car garage. What's that, a Maybach? And, yeah, a pimped-out Harley over by the Chinese Elm. Must be a real amusement park by night. But funny thing, squatting here in the dry noonday sun, I'm getting a Forest Lawn vibe. Spooked by the silence. Dead calm. Just the hummingbirds buzzing the forsythia.
An ear-splitting shriek and I nearly code. It's coming from the squawk box next to the front door. A voice, garbled and staccato, is frantically barking questions in falsetto Spanglish. Like an idiot I'm trying to communicate with it, stabbing any button that works to find the talk-back. I'm expecting the maid when the door crunches open revealing a tall slender Asian woman. She says, "Don't bother fiddling with that. It's on the flitz." The "flitz." Don't you just love the way they mangle our idioms?
But then I step back, I don't just hear her. I see her. Perfect, shining, jet-black, wedge-cut hair. Deep crimson lipstick. A vision in skin-tight jodhpurs, cashmere, and espadrilles. She's simultaneously one of the most sexually intimidating and elegant women I've ever met. A lilt of a British accent and her fractured dialect becomes instantly charming. I'm in love. Oh, boy. Heart-pounding, blue-balls, ready to be de-virginized, teen-age boy terror. Is she Thai, Japanese, what?
"Larkin, from the production office," I say, extending my business card. "Rang you last week."
She hesitates a second before taking it. "What would you say if I told you, I've changed my mind?" she says.
I don't believe it. Not for a second. She could have called ahead. Not to worry, I've been through this a thousand times before.
"Sure. I understand," I say. "But why don't I take down a few facts and figures for our database. Square footage. That kind of thing. So we can give you a quote over the phone if you ever reconsider."
She introduces "Oliver," her Filipino houseboy, slight of build and light of loafer, who's decked out in a white jacket and takes our drink order. He returns with a pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade, a side-car of Stoli, and a tray of brie and water crackers on the back terrace. She tells me her life story. Her name is Daisy. Her father's innovation. Had a weakness for Henry James and all things Empire. The whole family is mainland PRC with connections that go all the way back to the Long March. Mao's inner circle. Uncle Chou. Cousin Deng. Import/export specialists for the state agency that handles commodities. She calls Beijing her home, or at least the compound that serves as the family homestead. Along with a string of companies that stretch from Hong Couver to Buenos Aires. Translation: they've got a worldwide license to steal. They're the new robber barons of the Pacific Rim. Don't talk to me about Tien an Men. That was just some frat party that got out of hand. The rest is fairly predictable. Swiss boarding school. Summers in Cannes and Monte Carlo. Winters in Vail. A pied-a-terre at the Sherry. A professional degree in culinary arts from the Cordon Bleu. Two years at the Pompidou Center where she studied interior design.
That's what brings her to this particular corner of the planet. She has this thing for fashion and furniture. Daisy likes to play. But only the very best will do, in the very latest mode. Something her folks back at the Forbidden City just can't comprehend. And it dawns on me. This is her masterwork of the moment. Her canvas.
"Very nice stuff," I say, running my hand casually over the sleek chaise lounge. "Brown and Jordan?" She sucks in a short gasp of air and nods approvingly.
I say, "Quality isn't cheap, is it. But this should last a lifetime."
Daisy says, "Would you like to see the totally Ecart furnished living room?" Twist my arm. I can't resist.
She slides open a pair of shoji-screens and we step forward into a blinding white landscape of Corbusier chairs in black leather and chrome. Set off by matching recliners in contorted Eames plywood.
"The floor coverings are Eileen Gray," she says, gesturing to a series of mono-chromatic rugs spread out beneath a coffee table. "The sofa is John Michael Frank. From the Twenties. Original, not a reproduction."
She leads me into the kitchen. Just before we walk in she tells me to remove my shoes. "The floorboards are polished oak. Thirteen coats of lacquer," she says. "I can't bear to see them smudged."
I feel stupid holding up the back ends of my loafers by the tips of my fingers, but she's already reaching forward to put them in a lambskin bag. The kitchen is finished in the same brilliant white as the living room, only the countertops are covered in polished sheets of stainless steel. As are the Viking range, the double Gaggeneau ovens, Miele dishwasher, Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer, and a matching set of stools. Cold, clinical. A DNA lab with a Cuisinart.
"So, what do you like to cook?"
She shoots me a look like I've got to be kidding.
The morning of the shoot I'm at our soundstage in Valencia checking cover sets when my assistant, Kirk, rings me up on my mobile. He says, "You been out to your set today?" I say, "That bad?" "Mercury in Retrograde." I take Kanan Dume across the hill. Dooley, the teamster captain, sees me coming up the driveway and waves me right through without a moment's grief. He doesn't make me park in Outer Mongolia and hike in, which is the first tip-off. And he's actually smiling. For once, he's glad to see me. Today, I'm the entertainment.
"Morning, glass-hoppa." He puts on his mock serious face. "She's in the main pagoda," he says.
When I drive off I can see him in the rear view mirror gesturing in my direction to his drivers, doing a little kung-fu dance.
Out on the front terraces it hits me full on. I have to chuckle even though I know it's my ass in the sling. Furniture stacked up like cordwood. Needlepoint rugs draped over railings in piles like tarps. Assorted crew people are spilling out of the doorways in all directions lugging camera dollies, gang boxes, arc lights and cables. Craft services has set up their tables near the front steps. Bowls of munchies, a giant urn of coffee, two coolers. One for lemonade. One for ice tea. They're both leaking a river of fluid off the red checkered oilcloth, running out onto the flagstones and into the fish pools. A few of the koi are floating belly up, mixed in with some plastic cups and cigarette butts slowly dissolving in the water. I can hear sharp bursts of a chainsaw blasting away from inside the house. The key grip is obviously working his last-minute magic.
I step into the foyer and right away Daisy's up in my grill. At first I don't even recognize her. For starters, her hair is tied back in a bandanna. She's wearing torn jeans and a faded Chanel sweatshirt. No makeup. And spectacles. Big round horn-rims which make her look like some kind of bug-eyed foreign exchange student. We both have to shout to be heard over the blaring of the chainsaw.
"I didn't realize you wore contacts," I say. "Are they giving you a hard time today? Because sometimes these Santa Ana's can really kick up a lot of dust."
She has her hands on her hips. Her eyes are widening and her chest is heaving. She's staring at me like I've just checked in from Alpha Centauri. "What kind of movie you making here?" she says. "I thought you were first cabin outfit. On the up and up."
Wow. Even in the sweats you've got a way with words, Daisy. Me so horny, I love you long time.
She ushers me into the living room. Sliding open the shoji screens, I notice one of the frosted panes has been punched out. She points to it, horrified.
"I can take care of that," I say. "After we wrap. I know a guy. Genius with glass. Antique stuff, over on Melrose, near Larchmont. Use him all the time."
The second A.D., who's been pleading for quiet, shoots us both a pained look. A blast of static bursts from the two-way hooked to his belt. He fumbles with the radio and jacks in his headset. From deep within the master bedroom upstairs, a voice booms out, "Picture Up. Rolling!" Then the distant clack of the clapper-board pierces the silence like a guillotine. A weary voice, almost like an afterthought, calls out, "Action."
As usual, the lawyers settle out of court. We'd posted a two million dollar bond. When the insurance company delivers the settlement check I crack open the FedEx sleeve. A draft for ninety-eight thousand dollars. The production manager tells me to go out to Malibu, deliver it myself.
"That's a nice round number," I say.
"It's your mess," he says. "Go clean it up."
I jump in the car and head out onto PCH. Daisy isn't home, but I make sure Oliver signs for the envelope. By the time I get back on the road, traffic is backed up northbound all the way from Temescal to Pepperdine. An endless line of stress-puppies inching their way home for the weekend. Me, on the other hand, I'm sailing along at fifty-five, headed south to Venice. I might even pull over at Tia Sophia's for a Corona. No use getting my bowels in an uproar. Yeah, sometimes the places get trashed. But I can't focus on that. It's only stuff. That's the real beauty of it. No headaches. No hassles. I'm in. I'm out. Onward and upward. Next.
And the winners are…
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Nonfiction:
First Place
"What's-Her-Name, The Beautiful"
Richard Ferber
is a longtime Santa Fean. His wife is local musician Polly Tapia Ferber. He's been writing fiction, nonfiction and poetry for 10-something years under the pen name Richard Jay Goldstein, to honor his father, Herman Goldstein. He kept body and soul together until recently with a day job in emergency medicine; now he's much happier writing full time and living in debt.
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Nonfiction:
Second Place
"AMERICA in 635 words"
Mario J Gonzales
was born in Fresno, CA, but proudly grew up in Parlier. The son of the two women mentioned in the essay, he has three children and one wife and couldn't be happier with those numbers. This is the first writing contest he has won since the 5th grade. He also came in second in that one. Currently he teaches anthropology at New Mexico Highlands University.
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Nonfiction:
Third Place
"American Foreign Policy"
Anne Valley-Fox
is the author of a new collection of poems,
Point of No Return
(La Alameda Press, November, 2004). She is the mother of sons and lives in Santa Fe.
This year's non-fiction category was "America."
First Place
What's-Her-Name, The Beautiful
BY RICHARD FERBER
America is a dream.
America is a perilous dream dreamed by idealistic British colonial intellectuals whacked out on tea. America is an eyelash in the eye of history. And
America
is a name-tag, a handle, a title.
Our formal proper given name is
The United States of America
, as if we were trying to unite a frenzied circus of states of mind. But we are an informal people. We prefer a nickname, and what nickname we choose is in fact what hat we wear, what shoes we select for our footprints, how we sign our rental agreement on this fine old continent. Because it really does matter what name people shout out when they need you. And people are going to call on us. We're too big, too noisy, for them not to. So what name are they going to shout when they need us, this nation, in the golden afternoon, or in the silver morning, or during the thin hours of midnight, when the streets are wet and the air is still?
Maybe
America
is the nickname we want, but if so we've got to earn it. There's something particular about the name
America
. Something quiet and stern. Something inspired and wild.
America
is a full meal and a cool drink after a day of warm work.
America
is a drive through green mountains with the top down and a good CD in the player.
America
is a solemn undertaking, synchronized watches, an understanding between friends, a good deal, a risky bet.
The United States
is something different, something merely stitched together, a political construct, nailed up with overheated interstate highways and angry language, something temporary and fragile, something invented, not family.
Remember, we started out as a loose gaggle of locals, held together by a fragile paper ribbon called
The Articles of Confederation
. We were an uneasy crowd, at the beginning, a sparse field of tough, suspicious farmers and artisans, and durable, capable women, not sure if we could safely trust those folks across the river. We weren't even sure about nationhood, or whether we wanted to put ourselves in the hands of people we hadn't personally met.
But the rules then were made by European men who owned things, often including other people. Later we included other men, and eventually women. But the
radical
notion was including
anybody
. The crazy idea was that
regular people
could be in charge. Not kings, with feverish notions of divinity, their eyes on marble ranks of grandfathers. Not aristocratic lords, with whips and titles and deeds. Not bishops or priests or clergy, with their anonymous voices in the holy dark. And especially not the silken rich, the CEOs and power addicts, with hearts of hard, cold gold.
So we ceded a pinch of our autonomy and became
The United States
. That's pretty familiar now. We've gotten used to it. But
America
? That's something we haven't figured out yet.
In the 1860s we almost became
The Untied States of America
. It took us a long time to wake up from the nightmare of slavery, and it still visits us in the twilight before sleep, a creak on the stairs, a bony tapping on the curtained window of our collective soul.
We also gobbled up Indian nations, folks who thought they were doing fine on their own, who liked the idea of horses and steel knives and firearms, but who didn't realize the price of these things, because they weren't marked, no bargaining, you break it you buy it. We still struggle with fits of grotesque xenophobia, dyspeptic hallucinations of kikes and niggers and wops and bohunks and polacks and micks and krauts and greasers and redskins and whiteys and gooks.
America
? Not yet, not really, not in the sweet light of day.
America
is still an ideal, just out of reach. It lurks on page 343 of our fat civics text, the part we got to at 12:30 the night before the test, half asleep, black coffee bitter on our tongue. In our two-hundred and twenty-eight years we've been America for maybe half an hour or so. During a couple of wars, at times when tragedy stalked us, when Pearl Harbor smacked us in the face, for a few minutes after 9⁄11.
But we lose our bearings so easily.
America, love it or leave it
, we tell each other, taking our own name in vain. As long as we talk to each other that way, balk at caring for the least careful among us, wield the beautiful unity of the Divine as if it were a sword we could lift, tailgate each other with our engorged shopping carts, nod out in willful laziness in front of a TV full of ritual slaughter, we will be merely
The United States
, and not
America
.
America
is a name that proclaims unity of purpose, a willingness to share vision, a kind of global kindness and courage. To earn the right to have our friends call us by a neighborly name like
America
, we must first of all
have
friends, and then we must treasure them as we treasure our varied and various selves. We must see each other as the bright eyes in the techno dim we are, as the beating hearts in the oceanic air we are. We are all immigrants here.
America is a perilous dream. We have inherited a set of almost impossible ideals from those be-wigged tea-freaks Jefferson and Madison and Franklin and their hippy buddies. There
are
other, older modes to live by, more stable than unshackled, lunatic democracy. But not one can compare to the grandiose, utopian, quixotic, trustful, sweet-hearted, mad, and godly vision that goes by the name America.
Hey, America, let's hang out, let's run around the block, let's have a party and invite everybody.
Second Place
AMERICA in 635 words
BY MARIO J GONZALES
In the late 1990s film,
The Limey
, Peter Fonda's character is described as a "vibe." Excessively abstract, perhaps, for flesh, but for a diverse and dimly understood nation this depiction allows enough room to mentally maneuver, to frame the unframeable-America.
A vibe suggests a wave, a cluster of particles in a frequency transmitted beyond its source; potentially, a message broadcast and absorbed by others.
Of America I can picture images: a smiling Midwestern Prom Queen wearing her crown, young men on a cool, overcast morning surfing off the Pacific coast, a wedding, a fiesta, a Chinese New Year celebration, an outdoor basketball game in a Bronx playground.
Yet, without comprehension these images grow faint, like an Instamatic picture circa 1970. And for America a vibe, a wave is all my mind can assemble.
Some may say the vibe is a virus, reproducing itself through spells of illusion, seductively inviting us to live out fantasies of middle-class affluence: a big, beautiful house, a sleek car, a job with money and mobility. In short, a lifetime of dreamy sunsets as the weekend's barbeques filter through suburbia's monochromatic gated barrios.
For further images and ideas of America we can refer to Hollywood, the excess of film and television which candy our minds with what we would like to believe, what we know is not possible for all, but what we would like to believe. Still, such manufactured dreams are quite dreamless since they reveal little about our internal lives and so they fail, monstering frequently into pale irrelevance.
This one dimension of America, however large and glitter-splattered, is still just one-dimensional. So in America we search, with rage and sorrow, that which tells us something, anything, about the lives we hope to lead, if only we had the courage to lead them.
In America we see cars that litter the parking lots of strip malls that litter our eyes. Or we hear of the death of another undocumented man, woman or child, lost in the badlands of the Arizona border, deaths we attribute to lack of water and shelter. But, in truth, they are casualties of a different sort. Denied respect and dignity they died. And in dying this way, they haunt the lives of the living and dead in America.
Like today's undocumented my grandparents crossed the line that separates worlds, First from Third. They spoke Spanish, tended to their lives by learning to live in America. So well, in fact, they ended up succumbing to American diseases, cancer and hypertension, before my birth. What was left of them fell to my mother and aunt, both now in their mid-seventies. Born in America, my parents speak English and Spanish, effortlessly combing the two languages as if they were one, which they are. Here, these women weave patience into a restless world, closing its sad final beauty with a brief hope that tomorrow will be brighter than today. In their hearts and hands, creased with lonely moments of age, I feel the most genuine expression of the vibe, in the history of their voices, when they say nothing but sigh at the end of a long evening.
A final image.
In my nightmares and daydreams America appears as a dark starving bird poised to fly away, far away from two old women who spin the world like a spider web; a world they create and possess, destroy, ignore and kiss. When I awake there is a low sound, a shadow of a sound that mimics my pulse-a vibration without source or destination.
And the winners are…
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Poetry:
First Place
"Polonaise in A-flat Major, Op.53"
Shawn Newell
is a UNM graduate who has been published in
Conceptions Southwest
and
Women Becoming Poems
. She co-founded the local writing group, "Poets at Work" and enjoys writing, photography and the delicate art of procrastination.
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Poetry:
Second Place
"Romancing the Radio"
Robyn Hunt
lives in Santa Fe where she grew up. She shares her writing life with her husband and 9-year-old daughter. She has self-published four chapbooks, appeared in various anthologies and, along with Evangeline Brown, she co-authored and oversaw the production of a one-act play based on imaginary letters between Emily Dickinson and Georgia O'Keeffe. Her day job is in property management just off the Plaza only a few blocks from where the infamous Senate Lounge live radio broadcasts took place.
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Poetry:
Third Place
"The Blanket's Song"
Rose Najia
is the director of The Garden a Radical Presence, a school which combines art, ecology and healing to explore new ways of learning, sensing and relating. Rose has a nature-based healing practice and teaches here in Santa Fe, as well as in Asia.
This year's poetry topic was "Soundtrack of Your Life."
First Place
Polonaise in A-flat Major, Op.53
BY SHAWN NEWELL
The Piano is her husband's gift for
fifty years, three surviving children
and feeding his lover twice a week.
She plays the Polonaise mornings
her angry fingers run the keys as if
a battlefield, they stomp her drama
it's a call to arms, a soldier's march.
Over the years her finger pads redden
harden like blood clotting on cotton.
The critics say the Polonaise is Chopin
at his best. Patriotism on a grand scale.
How could he know a century later
an old wife with crooked shoulders
is caught in the steps of his ageless waltz
sleeping with her husband at night
mumbling curses at the dishes by day
and sewing plastic to a stained couch.
Second Place
Romancing the Radio
BY ROBYN HUNT
At night I tucked the flat, black transistor under my pillow
I was twelve then and I listened like an adolescent seeking heaven
to the d.j. and the low muffled songs that let in the rhythm of the night
Live from the Senate Lounge musky girls in hot pants got in free
where the music was local rockabilly, early rock rumba and very forbidden
It was 1968 and in the day the radio gave my teen desert Otis Redding
sitting on the dock where water lapped against the sides of the metal box
We heard it all through Marvin's grapevine
and Elvis courted a girl not much older than I with tender lovin'
Today at nearly 50 I still set the clock radio to waken me at 7
I drive my nine year old to school to the tune of early sun on a damp windshield
The d.j. is still present-a woman now-she rides alongside spinning
songs about a revolution, Van the Man from the garden
Dylan and Baez still swimming to keep from sinking
Old Stones gathering with the drumbeat as the caffeine comes on
And the whole neighborhood wakes slowly too
to their operas and jazz, their love songs
the Supremes and Jimi Hendrix over bacon and brie
Hot water hissing for tea and the church bells invisible only blocks away
taking the hour, one quarter note at a time.
Third Place
The Blanket's Song
BY ROSE NAJIA
Is the universe floating in a vast sea of light whose invisible power provides the resistance that gives to matter its feeling of solidity?
-Science Magazine
Without blinders, the outside corners of the eye
leak light. You might be looking
directly at the geranium, so ordinary
or a rose, when suddenly, it's flooded with
luminous significance. Not so unusual
for a flower, maybe. But you wouldn't
think that could happen to something as
man-made as the cheap carpet, those
little black spots, where the beige fibers
have melted, where the previous tenant's
cigarettes must have fallen, even those
little burns in the manufactured world
leak the sea of light.
Sometimes, exhausted
by the relentlessly expansive
pressures of beauty, I fasten my eyes
on the ugliest thing I can find. I dare the dirty
moth-eaten blanket folded
on the floor of my closet to reveal
itself. There must be some place to rest,
to sleep in the comfort of consensus, I beg
the blanket. Sometimes the blanket says, Sure,
whatever you want. It lies there emitting
only the greasy memories of its market
life and all the gray uses I've made of it.
It says, Sure, OK, whatever you want-
I'm just a thing like thousands of other things
you manipulate in a day. A discardable,
unremarkable thing. The vast sea of light
within the blanket, then, tightens its disguise
and continues until the pointless, mean world
of habit captures the foreground and we
can all go back to sleep. It's like prison
movies, where the inmate longs
to be out, but when paroled,
can't cope with how brilliant and unpredictable
a day is, or the way people stare at him, so he
hangs himself from a light fixture.
And all the time the blanket is folded
over the narrow bed in the cheap hotel room
saying, Whatever you want, friend,
whatever you want.
