We’re pleased to announce the winners of this year’s poetry contest in honor of National Poetry Month!
The winners and poems are as follows:
1st Place: “Before the Storm” by John Anglim
2nd Place: “Mobile Hope” by Chelsea Tryon
3rd Place: “Ghost Writer” by Ruth Michels
Before the Storm by John Anglim
Skipping nimble beneath the animal
sky, she long-strides by my window.
Fat wind-driven droplets spatter the pane.
and fill the screen, glistening.
The smell of last summer’s moths
and dust and june bugs rises from
the sill and fills my little room.
The leaves above her turn
their light green bottoms
to the sky and flutter.
Feeling the first of the rain,
she hastens her pace
and the corduroy makes a
muffled drummer as she goes.
Her sneakers squeak sweetly
on the dappled walk as she hurries
by, her lips pursed and whistling
a silent tune beneath a grumbling
summer sky.
Mobile Hope by Chelsea Tryon
Above the dripping tap
of mold and dried food scraps
there’s a fly trapped
between the screen and the
saran wrap
as the women takes
kitchen-sink photographs of
a boy, a ball, a laugh.
Eight legs scurry to the secret
leaks of a crumbling web;
Ants in the sidewalk cracks
head for the splintered steps
of address number six–
(someone dropped a Twinkie)
The stomps of five and five
soil the vinyl tile
–A broken nail turns a scratchy dial–
and for a quiet moment
they all stop and listen for the
sandpapered conversations
on the a.m. radio.
Ghost Writer by Ruth Michels
A neglected statue stands rooted
in the graveyard’s frozen sod. Its
shadow, swallowed by a pewter
sky, is as suffocating as the
silence.
The only sign of life is the curl of
gray smoke from the arthritic
chimney of the janitor for the dead.
Words invade, nostalgic and thin, a
lexicon of unanswered questions in
a sea of lost souls.
Stone cold. Their names are
scrubbed clean from life’s roster,
they await their marble etching.
I come swimming up from a dark
blue sleep. Harp music floats on a
rumor of sunlight. I awaken to my
unwritten story.
Image courtesy of poets.org