Summer 2010 Writing Regimen Contest Winners
At the end of every month-long writing regimen for
adults, participants are invited to submit up to three of their best
regimen-inspired pieces for a chance at publication on southeastreview.org. After sifting through the wide variety of moving, carefully-wrought submissions from our June regimen re-run, we chose one prose piece and one poem to display on our website. We are proud to announce that Celia Leber and Wendy Breuer are our most recent winners.
POETRY WINNER: Celia Leber
Celia Leber lives in the high desert of Central Oregon, where she practices law and volunteers as a ski patroller. Her work has appeared in the Literary Harvest 2009 Chapbook of the Central Oregon Writers Guild and in Maine Voices: A Celebration of the People of Maine and the Places They Love.
Celia chose to submit a piece in response to Day 27 of our June regimen re-run. The prompt was to write about space, whether in the sense of stars, moons, and planets, in terms of wide open landscapes, or considering the concept of personal space.
by Celia Leber
Stand on the plateau
at the place called Criterion Summit,
high desert all around you
a few Juniper dotted here and there
the rest a tan tablecloth patterned with sagebrush
sweeping out to the horizon.
The vast canyon of the Deschutes
invisible to the West
the river hidden, a thousand feet below.
The space around you is infinite:
you find yourself expanding
like a balloon—
any bigger and you might burst.
Becoming unbearably
light—
a duststorm
whipped up by the wind
that flows from the East
over the sagebrush
toward the dark mountains.
Swirling, you are swept westward
toward the black sheet of
rain in the distance,
a stage curtain
in front of the Cascades.
The distance is so vast
that the further you go
the further the mountains recede
behind that velvet
curtain of rain.
Becoming the wind,
cloaking yourself with the rain,
there is no turning back,
no need to be
earthbound.
Your sorrow dispersed
into particles of dust and hail
you are the desert.
PROSE WINNER: Wendy Breuer
Wendy Breuer lives with her husband and four cats who don't quite replace two grown daughters, and has worked as waitress, office temp, and visiting nurse. Her favorite job was training volunteers to work with high school students on critical thinking and writing. She has an MPH from Berkeley, an MFA (2008) in creative writing from Mills, and her prose is in Foundling Review, The Battered Suitcase, Literary Mama, Inkwell Journal, Ranfurly Review, and Rain Taxi. Her poetry has been in Rattle and Lynx Eye.
Wendy chose to submit a piece in response to the Reading-Writing Exercise from Day 7 of June's regimen re-run, which paired a section of Dennis Lehane's novel, Gone Baby Gone, with a prompt to create a character that relates a tale about someone else or describes another character in detail.
by Wendy Breuer
He entered Estee's room with hesitation. She noted pressed pants, tweed jacket, and string tie. Thick glasses reminded her of boys from home who studied Talmud all day. But though pale, freckled, small in height and slight in weight, he was not a boy. His fingernails were clean and manicured, unlike the day laborers who danced with each other on the patio below while they waited their turn. All night she heard the shuffle of their steps, and the bandoneón singing sad tangos until the small hours. He sat in the broken wooden chair across the room assessing the rough floorboards and the plank walls, unpainted, the gray sheets, the orange light from the bulb, and her pink dress and red tights. What did he want? It seemed as if he were waiting for her to tell him. His first time, maybe? No, he was from the world of men with knowledge. Some kind of professor who spoke the language of home, a lansman like Arnoldo, the one from Odessa who'd found her, made promises, schooled her, and brought her here. The look that said, "I know you better than you know yourself," like so much clay to be molded. If you trusted men with knowledge, your dreams went south instead of north. Better to trust the stupid cousin who pinned you against the stable wall as soon as you had breasts, who touched without knowledge. Finally, this one spoke. "I am Issac Ziporkin, poet," he said. From another room came piercing laughter. A neighbor's child fussed in the night, a woman shouted. Madam Gertrude yelled at Sophie to get a move on up the stairs. This Issac looked kind, but a man could have a kind look and still take you for a price. Later, when he stole her voice, he would say he'd made her up, his joke, his creation on the page. She didn't hate him for it; her only regret—she didn't have the art to create herself.
