DOORCOUNTYPULSE.COM august 7–14/2015 PENINSULA PULSE
THE HAL PRIZE 2015 21
[poetry-honorable]
To Hell with Patterns
{By Liz Dolan
Now that her home is silent red-bordered quilts lining her walls seem as loud and garish as graffiti, Jacob’s Ladder too structured The Double Wedding Ring too precise. No more stencils exquisitely sketched. In mourning she stitches a crazy quilt of scattershot patches: a swatch of her husband’s khakis, a pocket from her son’s beige shirt, a pinprick of fresh blood. To get more light she throws open her doors but cannot bear the rows of tall blue lobelia the clusters of yellow asters she planted herself the angles of the scrub pine bony in the wind. Liz Dolan’s poetry manuscript, A Secret of Long Life, nominated for both the Robert McGovern Prize, Ashville University, and a Pushcart has been published by Cave Moon Press. An eight-time Pushcart nominee and winner of Best of the Web, she was a finalist for Best of the Net 2014. She won The Nassau Prize for Nonfiction, 2011 and the same prize for fiction, 2015.
[Judge’s Comments “A vivid and apt metaphor, the quilts as stages of life. Near winner!”
{Heid E. Erdrich
[poetry-honorable]
Meeting a Friend
{By Linda Aschbrenner
Caught in cold shadows, I shiver through high plateau mist. Dark clouds drift down to the tide. A two-mile walk to the Kafka Hill Cafe to meet a friend dead since November. Our date was set October 19th. He’ll disregard his current state, rock my spoon on the tabletop or dress as a wren and tap at the glass, sing out over the hawthorn. Linda Aschbrenner, Marshfield, edited and published the poetry journal Free Verse (1998-2008) and founded Marsh River Editions in 2001, publishing 17 chapbooks for fellow poets. She is presently working on a family memoir in poetry and prose with her sisters. She enjoys reading, writing, and photography.
[Judge’s Comments “Short and simple, but admirable for the withheld sentimentality. Love the wren at the end.”
{Heid E. Erdrich