The Ontario Poetry Society - Awards - Ted Plantos Memorial Award Winner for 2024

Rhonda Melanson

Here is what our Judge and Selector had to say about this poet:

It is with great enthusiasm that I endorse Rhonda Melanson as this year's recipient of the Ted Plantos Memorial Award.
She is a serious poet who does not shy away from the serious business of writing brilliantly about very dark topics with a clear eye and a steady hand. And for all the darkness, there is humour as well. This is one of the best sets of ten poems it has been my pleasure to read in all the years I have been called upon to select a recipient of the award. Ted would be pleased.

- John B. Lee, Poet Laureate, Brantford, Poet Laureate, Norfolk County.

Poems by Rhonda Melanson

A Mother At The Foot Of A Phone Pole Memorial

She sits with her white sorrow. Her grief
multiple streamers. How many Januarys
ago did her daughter with the corkscrew
curls come home for lunch (grilled cheese,
tomato soup)? How loud was the one-two
of brake-crash, even heard by her teacher
a block away?

A grieving mother still looks like this--- mad
as mother steroids at all the uncurious folk, cruising
by the crucified daisies, eye-level, on battered
phone pole. Tomorrow, she will bring more---
wield staple gun like assault rifle, surrender
more submissive stems and petals to gods
who believe in damnation for those who forget
about angels, still tumbling in magnified memory
in the snow.

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Classroom Evacuations: A Modern Greek Tragedy In Several Acts

Nine forty one. The gymnasium. Grade Fives. Floor hockey.
Another fine day in the agora. Till one bruised loser plus
two hurled sticks equals one Superman net ricocheting
off gymnasium floor, today's concrete trampoline. Hastiest
exit ever. No hope for bounce back. No hope for the republic's
return to an otherwise noteworthy performance.

     Boys and girls, this is not an evacuation. Not sure what we're
     allowed to call it, but our principal calls it a return to the nest.
     According to her, there's rightness in the number of times we say
     it. So fly, little birdies, fly, and don't let the door hit you! For that,
     we're also responsible.

Ten fifty two. Kindergarten room. What might the price be for one
Pokemon card, confiscated? Give unto me a bucket of classroom
Lego, dumped, a heavy downpour of primary colours and I'll
present to you a little man's standing O, thunderous, Thor-like,
and for his encore, a deliberate tearing of the cover of
Where The Wild Things Are.

     Boys and girls, the nest is kindling to the point of no returm. Pivot,
     we must pivot! Can you repeat after me, pivot! Pivot! It means turn,
     turn on ball of foot, then lead in opposite direction. Turn, I said!

Two oh three. Afternoon recess. A hit list, he wrote, dagger points on those who
made basketball ahead of him. The chosen ones, the cougar pursued, on playground,
a grassland for predator and prey. Did the duty teacher dream from victim's scalp,
the handfuls of hair, the crossword of scratches on a forearm, the hungry paws
encircling a neck? For the rest of the school, a Code Nest? And what about the angry
birds who stayed to fight? For their friends.

     For his demons, we are supposed to be sorry. In silence, of course. Boys
     and girls, forget what I told you about pivot. Too controlled for the words
     I really want to say. Too gritty real for the fantasy of flight. Should I plunk
     down an essay, a doctrine of thought, a poem? As long as I don't call each
     daily infero an evacuation.

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Holy The Begotten

Holy the stirrups
holy the raised knees
holy the cervix
holy the spread
holy that hole
according to need.

Holy the resilience to bare
bear the poke, the prod.
Holy the cave, holy the walls
contracting,collapsing.

Holy the breathing
the in, the out.
Holy the force-
the push
or the pull.

Holy the gush.

Holy the labourers-
holy the compassion
in that antiseptic room
holy the hand
squeezed purple
holy the whisper-
you did great!

Holy the relief.
Holy a life
begotten.

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How Do Rainbows Fall, Exactly?
(In Memory of the Afzaal Family in London, Ontario)

When we contemplate
the felling of rainbows

how they balloon
above boulevards

collapse in tragic layers

we fade
to Kristellnacht by the traffic lights

a cut scene
where colourful victims

bleed out
thin bands of mayday

from their broken window spirits

and we remember
how we thought we all bled.

We forget
about the ghouls
that shrink
while others
levitate

wearing cloaks
that aren't even a real colour.

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How To Grieve For The Unvaccinated

Skip the denial,
dive blood first into anger.
Fact is, you can call red
oxblood
crimson
scarlet

or candy red
like her cardigan & lipstick,
her nose ring, a stud bolder
than mine. Cinnamon wisdom,
sweet & sharp,

Yet mischievious
with her conspiratorial
half-whisper-
I'm not vaccinated, you know,
and you giggle back,
regret later...

Words futile
as final wills and testaments,
swallowed like plastic
down uncomfortable throats

Your words. Hers.
You remember them peaceful.
Rose-coloured.

Making Poutine Rappee With My Husband

Let us skin those spuds naked
till they look like us: heavy moons
undressed,
whole
halved
quartered. Let us dream
about being grated to barest bits,
how we can get raw,
ballsy even
with those slippery shavings,
sliding in
the wiggly salted pork,
tasty on the tongue!
We can light fires
under tin pot oceans,
our little worlds
boiling foam around their curves.
We are a plateful of universes,
our rounded bellies
swollen enough to touch

again, again
skin on skin.

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Snow Tread Hearts

the morning after dad died
two snow tread hearts
in front of our house

bold
in their space taking

from delivery truck's
tired grooves, perfect
three point turn

graceful execution

twin arches
heaving sympathy and joy.

flinging fast
stubborn November snow
appearing the previous night

fresh, settled. No longer
sifting through black
clouding our dusk.

Dual heart tips
point at me

moving me forward
two exact compasses.

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The Hair Exhibit at Auschwitz That Doesn't Allow Photographs

These shafts
dead piled
behind glass

straight, wavy
blackish, brownish
wheat coloured
scarecrow braid

This silky earth sticks to surface
of ballooning outrage

shuttered recollections of follicles,
the ones scissored from becoming.

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Ukrainian Lady of the Sunflowers

Only mystics see her
that restless virgin
turned airborne goddess.

In that horizontal hover
flinging seeds of rebellious colour,
she is ground zero mad

rooting in favour
of viridescent fields
and blue hope skies.

Her delicate defiance
too buries the dead.
Places them under stalks

she planted for more
than just tiny glories
and a splash of sunshine.

Like any mother cradles
her remains, she picks
from her flower's black rounds

fresh seeds.
Buries them as she howls.

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Walking (Off Anxiety)

Walk.
Walk without socks,
convince unbelievers
that blisters are stigmatas.

Walk
towards the chaos of the trees,
derail the trainwreck thoughts,
explode their carefully laid tracks.

Walk
and let your eyes
also travel in technicolour,
imagine the path as brick
with everything else aglow.

Walk
till you notice the rabbit, statuesque,
frozen in camouflage brown.
Confront the white witch who bullies you too.

Imagine
her scrawny neck, squeeze it, delight
in the softness you didn't know she had. Find
the spot where the gagging begins. And ends.

Stretch.
Your legs, back, hamstrings, calves,
your fossilized hips, your vagus nerve.
They too are part of the resistance.