2024 Frontier OPEN Finalists Part One: Sighle Meehan, Imani Cezanne, Tija Tippett
Our first installment of poems chosen as finalists includes Sighle Meehan’s eerie and echoing “half-doors, bolted and broken,” which creates a call and response that haunts readers well after they leave the poetic space. By contrast, Imani Cezanne’s “I found this poem in Auntie Elva’s kitchen,” is warm, intimate and inviting as it describes the friendly chaos that can bring a family together and create connections across generations. To finish out the trio, Tija Tippett’s “Dekopon,” is lucid and full of sharp turns that bloom with light and color.
These poems may seem very different, but they are all reaching for connection, which is what drew our editors to them—their depictions of the visceral and urgent sensations that define the human experience, from Tippett’s orange peel to Meehan’s ever-shifting and mysterious sea—create new worlds out of the old ones and illuminate spaces we thought we understood, even mastered, but now see again with brand new eyes.
I found this poem in my Auntie Elva’s kitchen
by Imani Cezanne
seasoned salt black pepper lemon pepper yes, both, onion
powder garlic salt garlic powder yes, both careful with that
salt now grab ya herbs: rosemary thyme basil sage bay leaf, iono
what the leaf do but granny put it in hers so i put it in mine, now
what i tell you bout that salt, can’t be measurin everything either
this aint bout tables and spoons, its bout feelings— three quarter
this,two thirds that uh uh this bout knowin when to stop. see, the hands
always remember the hands that taught them the tilt and shake and
we pass this knowing down, palm to palm, in praise of those who
fed the folks who fed the folks who feed us mhmm cuz somebody’s
favorite auntie seasoned a big ol pot roast last night and didn’t
wake up this morning to put it in the oven mhmm somebody’s
mama planned they favorite meal, sides too, and was called on to glory
fo’ they coul—GIRL turn that fire down fo’ you scald my granny’s pot! now
what was i sayin. that’s right. you gotta be easy with all that salt. you can
always throw in some more but too much salt and you won’t be able to taste
nothin else
Dekopon
by Tija Tippett
In another life,
don’t you think I’d see the world
in clear, crisp color
and defined lines that divide the canvas –
not the smudge of charcoal,
smeared by a wreckless hand,
or swirling colors that drip
because too much water was added to the pigment –
here’s the thing:
to write about it would be to give it more air,
more breaths than it already stole from me:
the hopscotch breaths
or the slow standing-mountain breaths;
each one: flesh ripped from my stomach,
peeled away like the skin of a Sumo Citrus
in thick, popping rumbles.
I do not wish to be peeled back, raw,
only to know the smell of an orange
as it twists its essence through a room.
Sighle Meehan is from Galway, Ireland. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies including The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, Fish Anthology, Cyphers, Skylight 47 and New Welsh Poetry. She won the i Yeats, Trocaire, Goldsmith, Poems for Patience, competitions and was runner-up/shortlisted in Fish, Over the Edge, McLellan, Poems of the Sacred and several others. Other works include Maum, a bi-lingual play professionally produced by Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe for Galway International Arts Festival: Brighid, a drama documentary broadcast several times by TG4; pageants and short stories. She won the Imbas Celtic mythology short story competition (Australia).
Pushcart Prize nominee and Ruth Lilly Fellowship finalist, Imani Cezanne is a writer, poet, performer and educator living in the Bay Area. With a degree in Africana Studies from SFSU, Cezanne has been awarded fellowships from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Brooklyn Poets and in 2023 was named the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Writer in Residence. Imani has work published in POETRY magazine, Nimrod, Variant Lit and Palette Poetry, among others and in March of 2020 she became the Woman of the World Poetry Slam Champion for the second time. While all are welcome to enjoy her work, Imani writes for Black people, especially Black women, and is committed to the liberation of all oppressed people.
Tija Tippett is a Latvian American poet. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Washington Bothell. She participates in local poetry events and open mics in Washington. Her previous work may be found in the Cider Press Review.
