Ten Cents

Once
I saw a man,
whose brother
had been murdered,
sidearm a coin
into a fountain
and for years
I puzzled
over what this meant.

Amid cheap prattle,
weather speculations,
baseball scores,
while his heartbeat kept time to some
inner dirge
that held him at a remove from me,
from everyone,
his countenance only broke open once —
as he sailed the life of his brother
on a dime
into the water.

The 2017 Luminaire Award for Best Poetry
FINALIST

We are pleased to announce this poem as a finalist for the 2017 Luminaire Award for Best Poetry, honoring the independent press’ best poems and hybrid works of the year. The winners are selected by an external panel that judges all pieces blind and chooses the full list of 12 finalists from hundreds of entries. Alternating Current does not determine the final outcome for the judging; the external judges’ decisions are final.

In his later years, Gary Beaumier has become something of a beachcomber and has self-diagnosed with “compulsive walking disorder.” On a number of occasions he has cobbled together a wooden sailboat. He is a finalist and semifinalist for the Luminaire Award for several of his poems, and three of his poems were recently published in the Winter 2017 edition of Flumes. He currently teaches poetry in a women’s prison.

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