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First
Place Winner: Megan Adam
Fifteen
minutes.
September
2007
In fifteen minutes
each week's lifetime canned like jam,
boiled down and ladled
into the jar
of our allowed time.
It is not sweet,
this telling,
rushed over the phone
in a bid to beat the
operator.
A burning mouth
against the black
plastic receiver
picked up by
hundreds of men
leaning in to make calls like
these.
Hurried, bitter, contrite.
Always ending with
"I love you."
It is not sweet,
this statement,
when the
man who says it
stands thousands away
expelling it in the final
moment
as the call
abruptly
ends.
The words taken
and spread out over
a week. An anecdote for
one day
an amusement wrapped
with lunch
for another.
The ferment of
fifteen minutes
cold on toast
or
mixed with oatmeal
becomes easier
to swallow
then.
Back to Oct 2007
Winners
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