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The Denver County Fair, now in its fourth year, was conceived as a big, fat blue-ribbon love letter to everything that’s cool about Denver, from local artists and a healthy geek culture to, yes, legalized pot. So it’s only fair that this year’s poetry contest has an I Heart Denver theme.
This year’s entries — all unpublished and judged by a panel of literary pros — explored love in the Mile High City from just about every angle. Following are the judges’ five final picks; hear all of them read live at noon Sunday, August 3, on the fair’s Arts Pavilion Stage, where the top three poets will also be awarded with prizes and ribbons.
See also: Pot pavilion ready for lift-off at Denver County Fair
Dark Sandi . . . (Sandi Calistro)
Dark haired Sandi buries ink under skin,
pulsating steel dripping ink and ideas drives easy under a thin human layer
dripping blood big eyes and batting lashes,
long dresses and draping sashes
our Dark Sandi buries ink under skin,
big eyes and flowing locks that flirt and dance and grind up and down Denver city blocks.
Ladies ride arms and legs give away wide eyed glances
steal hearts on high lands streets
Denver boys want girls in ink on girls on girls on girls…….
— Dale Sawin
Continued reading for more Denver County Fair poems.
Portrait of a Poetry Class on 9th Street Park
Dedicated to Professor Jake Adam York
On a day when the wind blew through
like a burp
like an excuse me
like a mint sprig tickled by bourbon
flitting sheets of paper on the long worn table
poems
quivered in front of students – gifts, prayers –
Michael, the boy beside me, not yet dead
not yet having thrown himself off a roof,
the dreamy-eyed girl across from me
not yet married
not yet divorced
not yet broken by love
and you — alive —
professing the merits of blues albums
the sound of poetry in the notes
maybe my words should be more like
the bass guitar thump thump thumping, baby
let us feels those words,
let us seek eternity.
— Jamey Trotter
Continued reading for more Denver County Fair poems.
New Love
Take a girl by the hand,
Picked up and out of mud.
Wait until she dusts herself off.
See what she’s become.
Hear Delta blues echo behind her
and see what she’s carried in her pockets
from cotton fields
to Mississippi swamped plates
stacked with fish and corn pokes.
She’ll tell you
About deep swimming gar biting at good-bye
And big sunsets before meteor showers.
But,
See if she can tell you why the trip was worth the cost.
Why from her bedroom window
Each morning,
she carries her song to high, rocky points
Where snow still rests on mountain tops in July.
Ask her what it means to own a city,
To call each building hers.
To lick giant ice cream scoops dished in homemade waffle cones
Watch the fireworks from the highway
Sit on top of an old car’s hood and call this new city
Her home.
See if she’ll describe Highlands filled with
Trills and romantic accents
Or music and poetry of 5-points
Incense floating down Federal and Alameda
Stars you can see over parks
Filled with symphony music
Or summer jazz
And a once-in-a-lifetime love.
Take her by the hand.
I promise, she’ll laugh at your old jokes
Overheard in comedy clubs
Or street performers on 16th Street.
Go ahead and ask her.
Ask what it is about a new place
That moves itself
closest
to her heart.
— Raylene Kaufman
Continued reading for more Denver County Fair poems.
East Colfax
Low riders riding on the hips of their mothers
Shoulders bustling out of straps
The borders of this town are squeezed
between tattooed arms and dancing poles
The streets are in bloom with neon lights
like cheap fake flowers bedded down
in crooked sidewalks
advertising weekly rates for rooms
with free adult movies
and written on walls the spray painted language of the streets
jagged letters written in a hurry to issue warnings
of where you are and where you should not be
if you are of another gang, another neighborhood.
Rocks roll in women’s hands as they stand on street corners
The smoke moves up and down the street sweetly
into lungs for mere pocket change
This is the street of the destitute and the prostitute
A strip of pavement that unravels through the night
under any moon in any season
where what you should not be looking for can be found
Liquor stores hang out on each corner
flickering beer lights in darkened windows
People of all nations walk this street
People of all nations live along its corridor
carving out their culture in a collage of living
The Bantu, the Ethiopian, the Middle Eastern,
the Mexican, the Dominican
And I too live off its strip
the longest street in America,
close to the beating heart of a city.
— Taryn Browne
Continued reading for more Denver County Fair poems.
First Denver Poem
I the forsythia bloom love at the stoop of Elizabeth
I the sugared parsnip of Newsome harp love, the all darjeeling, the
immense light that sharps
skipping a stone with a drunken rant in the street
I mauvest lilac trip whetted in respiratory love
Love I the infinitely starry halo
Ever a leafy manifest erupts above the balcony, I realized
Of life, the wormwood fairy; sailing
green goes I
Into that drooping hut
With scruffy dogs of all ages (canine), the carriage beasts
(breaths) snorting
at the internal combustion
Where the unselfconscious hit the ATM, and cash springs out
after Eleni Sikelianos
— John Patsynski
Can’t get enough Denver County Fair poetry? The fair will also feature a Poems-Write-Now on-demand poetry booth, where you can drop off a topic and a $5 poet’s donation and come back fifteen minutes later for a finished work, hand-written and stamped with an “Official Denver County Fair Poem” seal. The Denver County Fair runs Friday, August 1 through Sunday, August 3 at the National Western Complex. Learn more about the fair online.
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