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Sex & Peace & New Beginnings. What a concept! We asked our readers to write about that very thing, and received nearly 100 entries, each presenting a different take on this deceptively difficult subject. Our original provision was for a first, second, and third place poem, but the entries were so good that we've also included two additional Honorable Mention poems.
On behalf of our Editor-in-Chief, Susannah Indigo, our Fiction Editor, Bill Noble, and myself -- congratulations to our winners!
We'd like to thank everyone who took the time to enter, and hope you enjoy our choices. If there is always conflict somewhere in our world, then hopefully peace is an objective, and not simply just the occasional absence of war.
--Devan Macduff, Poetry Editor
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 1st Place
Aria Williamson
Suppose
all the politicians were laid end to end
repeatedly
and each Senator learned tantra before war
the Kama Sutra was used to break filibusters
and honey dust covered the Floor
Tipper & Al would lead slow dances
executing kisses before each roll call
Good Vibrations would cater the Bushes
serving dildoes and rockets and balls
In this world without war without end
in this world full of feathers and lust
in a future with satin-covered gavels
the Al Qaeda boys would go bust.
©2002 by Aria Williamson
Aria Williamson is a poet and teacher living in New Mexico.
Second Place
Arlene Ang
The Eastern Philosophy of Sex
Scissored by my thighs,
he lectures that Chinese philosophers
created peace between Earth and Water
by warming labial folds with hands.
Don't rouse the sleeping dragon,
I warn him as my fingers close
around wrought iron to fight against
my back undulating on winter quilt.
Snaking over my breasts,
he tongues that firecrackers were used
to scare evil spirits away
and he has just what I need.
Enveloping his theory in pelvic muscles,
I muse that it must have been
New Year's Eve all the time for the wives
and concubines of Chinese philosophers.
©2003 by Arlene Ang
Arlene Ang is a freelance translator and Web designer living in
Venice, Italy. She is the Italian editor of Niederngasse. Her poetry has recently appeared or is
upcoming in Slow Trains, Sidereality, Scrivener's Pen, Poet's Canvas,
Tryst, Peshekee River Poetry, and Sometimes City. Recent awards
include the 2002 Eros & Thanatos Prize (Absinthe Literary Review).
When the cork has been popped
and the champagne has stopped spurting,
when the cookies have crumbled and all the cherries
have been licked from their chocolate coats,
when the balls have finally dropped
and the party is over...
that's when the revolution begins.
Go ahead and make promises you don't mean to keep.
I won't hold you to them. I will only hold you
through the long night ambling on towards morning,
will only pour joy over our bodies as we braid our limbs together,
until your life and my life lie still: two great nations of contest,
talking of peace in soft pillow-whispers.
It's happening everywhere.
All around the world, a secret plot
overthrows war with nothing more than warm, willing flesh.
Forget music.
the universal human language is
orgasm.
©2003 by Sheela Ardrian
Sheela Ardrian lives in central Illinois. Her writing fields
include gender studies, erotica, and alternative sexualities. Her favourite
hobby is rocking the boat.
Soldiers are for kissing
tongues to hungry, wind-cracked lips
pulling sweat-stained uniforms
over hard-muscled torsos
past new pink smallpox scars
down throbbing, swollen flesh
UCMJ* be damned
Soldiers are for holding
air thick with pheromones before battle
strutting youth and laughter
bravado, adventure, and prayer
eyes steeled with determination
to defend and protect with lawful orders
Soldiers are for loving
in the lonely dark of night
when they scream out ghosts of what they've seen
what they've endured, and what they've had to do,
seeking succor in a warm forgiving body
each desperate thrust a healing balm
each release a whisper, "We are alive."
©2003 by Kate Dominic
Kate Dominic is the author of Any Two People, Kissing (Down There Press, March 2003). Her erotic stories appear in many magazines and anthologies.
*Per the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), military personnel can be court-martialed for sodomy if they engage in any sexual
activity other than heterosexual, missionary-position intercourse.
Honorable Mention
Stephen Roxborough
A Lasting Peace
I want to make passionate war
inside your holy Middle East
Invade all your Biblical hot spots
trespass upon a wanting Bethlehem
divide every inch of your Eden
and conquer your kinky Babylon
not with suicide terror or relentless tanks
or smart bombs or dumb skuds or
nukes or chemicals or cruise missiles
but with a dangerous biological weapon
thousands of years old
yet young and long and strong enough
to weaken your best defense
and move our innermost Baghdad
like a wild Arabian stallion
in the heat of a mad desert tryst
Only then will I surrender and submit
to all your conditions and positions.
©2003 by Stephen Roxborough
Stephen Roxborough, aka
roxword, is a Jewish tantric Buddhist pacifist spoken-word poet who is finally learning to swim like a dolphin,
quiet and powerful, in Anacortes, Washington
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The Poet's Companion - by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux