Poetic writing upon the work of New Orleans artist Monica Zeringue seen at Meadows Museum of Art, Shreveport; contest deadline Oct 14

Monica Zeringue, New Orleans: monicazeringue.com, a photo by trudeau on Flickr.

Julie Kane, Louisiana Poet Laureate, will judge the Friends of Meadows Museum Poetry Contest that is open to Louisiana poetry writers, age 18 and above, residing in Caddo Parish. There will be cash awards to contest winners, says Rachel Hill.

Deadline for submissions is October 14. Meadows Museum of Art at 318-869-5040.

The poem below was penned in response to the 30-foot Zeringue mixed-media piece by writer Ashley Havird. She is not in the contest.

GIRLS AT PLAY

After Matador, an installation by Monica Zeringue

We young girls play
with our black black hair
in socks and underwear
“Where the Wild Things Are.”
This looking-glass scroll
unrolled, a hanging cave . . .
Hide-and-seek among our pigs
and the tall clean trunks of trees.
We dance to the bull-fight.
(Remember the pony?)
Our fingers make bull-horns.
Our hair is miraculous.
Without it, total white-out.
It stitches a horizon, a hill,
a tightrope for a pig.
When we wear our bull-masks,
the pigs are not afraid.
What are these trees that grow
instead of heads from our necks
sometimes? . . .
that grow from our backs
like a mammoth wild hair?
Sometimes we just saw them off
and make stumps--okay?
We play at digging to China
with our garden claws--
at making Eskimo holes in the ice--
a mystery down there! Heaven, we think,
where the giant hummingbird came from,
the one that flew right through the dream
to hover on the other side
of the looking-glass wall in the paper cave.
We weave our rivery hair
together, we play.

Ashley Mace Havird