Annual Poetry Contest - 2011 Winners

First Division (K-8) First Prize

Kite

by MARY ENSING

Flying diamonds soar
through the breeze
like the swaying tail of
a dog, bobbing up in the air
like a bobber at sea,
fishing for trees to hook on.

Free from splitting winds,
my kite makes a run for it.
I pull back and its yielding,
freezing in the air. It drops
to the ground, down at my feet.
Then wind picks up my kite
of many colors. It sways
in the breeze. It moves
horizontally like a rainbow
in the sky.

I watch the sun napping
in the wind, the sun is falling,
making the sky orange. The calling
of my name startles me.
I get in the car
and look at the purpling sky.
When I get to my house,
I think of my kite shimmering.
It blinds me of
all other things.

First Division (K-8) Second Prize

Racing the Morning Sun

by SAM VERBURG

As my mom drives by

the old barn with the

fading reds mixing with the

wreckless forest greens,

I notice the hues of

the skies expand, trying

to snake past our

car and beat us to

school. But we refuse

to succumb to the

mysterious velvet and

orange that is taking

over the sky. So we

speed on with the

rising ball of fire

chasing after us.

First Division (K-8) Third Prize

In Her New Tomorrow

by AUBREY FREY

As she winds around the bend in the road,
she feels herself blending in with
the wild flowers, the vivid colors,
and the distress in the oncoming sunset
in some awkward relationship.
Her mind is far from the lonely road she is on right now,
back to where her thoughts grew clouded
with every bruise that colored her skin.

Her SUV disappearing in dust
down the deserted road,
she finds peace in watching the small and seemingly forgotten towns
falling far behind her.
She'll need to stop soon for her aching eyes and wandering soul,
but then she will have to let the troubles
of yesterday catch up with her
in tomorrow.

Second Division (high school/undergrad) First Prize

after I am dead

by MAX LOCKWOOD

after I am dead

lying in a desert plain

undisturbed

listening to the cracked

earth

conscious as the wind

slowly erodes

my body away

feeling myself decay

drinking every moment

like the longed-for

desert rain

from one moon to the next

i watch nights

pass into days

my eyes glowing in the heat

as crows eat them and depart

i take pleasure in the thought

of my sight

become theirs

skin loses meaning

i taste it on the dry air

losing touch

of what I am

finding home

in desert sand

ambiguity is

my ecstasy

and one night

the rains do come

pouring into exposed veins

black, dried blood

become liquid again

seamless with the mud

seeping into the cracks

consumed by sensation

i feel

there can be nothing

so sexual as this. . .

and then i awake . . .

. . . as from dream to dream . . .

and the sun is burning!

searing, the pain

so enduring and thick

all other feelings

forgotten

reduced

to sinew and bone

exposed

a skeleton bleaching white

and whiter

uselessly i fight the pain

acceptance comes slow

barely noticed

the air begins to cool

and i feel it descend

this moonless night

like none before or after

stars soothe my bones

with cool, blue tendrils

of light

but too quickly i sink

into dawn, resigned

soon to know nothing

but disintegrating heat

again

become a brittle witness

to the true nature of time

its furies washing over me

extremes of dark and light

become meaningless

melding together

indistinguished

and slowly, at this ancient tempo

i begin to see

to feel

I am nothing if not everything

the caking mud

and breaking cracks

the hot dry air

thought on the wind

stirring immutable

a crow searching the sky

the sun's piercing glare

a fingernail moon and

the light concealed beneath

rains not yet come,

clouds that will carry them,

and the desirous thought

patiently calling them forth

not lost

but reclaimed

i hear it, it is coming—

the tangible, the Real!

imperceptibly

the desert gathers

into its breast

my bones

my final debt

my only gift

become the children

of ancient

weathered

sand.

Second Division (high school/undergrad) Second Prize

At the Lake

by LAURA HARTNESS

My dad’s head bobs

up and down in the water

as he treads in the blue-green deep.

Come on, his outstretched arms call out,

you can do it. My toes hold fast

the edges of the dock working splinters

into my skin. I shiver

in the summer sun.

This one is a spotted bass, he tells me,

krissst! opening another can of beer.

The small silvery fish thrashed

against the boat’s aluminum shell.

Stopping, gasping air.

I stare, looking for the familiarity of fear

in its dark, fathomless eye.

With my toes in the soft

silt, the water is up to my chin.

My fingers are lures

beckoning my child to jump. Watching

from the side, is my dad;

his head bobbing a perpetual yes,

I’d love a drink, thank you.

Hold this, my dad says,

giving me his beer. With shaking hands,

he works the hook out

of the fish; we watch it

shimmer fast into the deep.

In the clear blue of my dad’s eyes

I catch the glint of a spotted bass,

and a silvery trace of fear.

Second Division (high school/undergrad) Third Prize

We Have No Use For It Anymore

by OLIVIA EZINGA

“We have no use for it anymore,”
your mother said as I stood on your doorstep.
“You can have it. It's what he would have wanted.”

In her eyes I could see the seas of the world.
Her hands quivered
as she surrendered your viola--your heart and spirit,
and what you drew every breath for--
the music that would flood your lungs and give you life.

So I drove faraway to our secret place,
the abandoned schoolhouse in the woods
on Pratt Lake, where maples trees and honeybees
sway with the wind and I am at peace.

I laid your case on a cast-iron desk,
and I unzipped it. It was like
collapsing the dam in my heart
and letting the reservoirs
flow for the first time since you passed;
I thought of us making bracelets out of cello strings
and cutting off the circulation in our hands with them too,
and how we laughed until we cried
in fourth hour orchestra and Mr. DeLille
never reprimanded us? No, I'll never forget.

It's rich mahogany like the hair in your eyes;
your bow fits my grip like your hand in mine.
The strings are still caked with rosin
as if you played just yesterday.
But I know better,
and bow to those strings,
I play a D major,
your favorite scale because it has two sharps,
“one for each of us,” you said.

Third Division (grad students/adults) First Prize

Nagasaki

by David W. Landrum

Like one of Hiroshige’s bent-down figures

hunched over in the rain,

crossing the bridge

beside the place where

The Love Suicides

saw their last dawn,

their puppet-anguish

mourning a shell-washed world—

in this place lost to billowing

clouds of fire, to red,

I heard the Mozart girl in Ishiguro’s text

play her violin

in the ruins of the old city.

Django Reinhart’s band did a sappy song:

Down in Nagasaki

Where the women chew tobacce

And the men all act so wacky.

But history does not know humor.

The years are mute

as twin stones of a mill wheel—

dust that scars the sky

when grain is pounded out.

You did your butoh dance—

face painted white, breasts bare—

to commemorate the day

your brother died.

Butoh is the dance

of after-Nagasaki—

the choreography of death, of hope.

You drenched yourself with mud,

with red water; that dance

the only vehicle you knew

for anguish larger than the sky.

Yet still I sit lost in the hundred views,

the Samurai who came

for the girl he paid on Friday nights.

I am the dust of the unsayable.

You are the word, though silent,

face white, breasts white, tongue

painted a harsh burgundy to express

without utterance all we try to say:

anguish of martyrs killed here

for their religion; anguish of those

destroyed as enemies of warring realms.

We are the rainstreaks

coming down with such velocity,

the people bend

and hold their pointed hats.

Third Division (grad students/adults) Second Prize

Off-Shore Disasters

by Irene Fridsma

the seas

gather themselves

into a great tsunami and breach

the seawalls

drowning the city

swallowing its inhabitants

off-shore

a thin quilt of oil

unfolds its way

across the oceans’s surface

driven by winds

it rides atop waves

toward the battered shore

then sinks under the surface

a noxious cloud settling

like fog seeping

into under-water caverns

shrimp

succumb

as the viscous sludge

slides into their beds

sullied brown pelicans

bob like plastic decoys

a corps of skimmers

gathers the slimy duvet

ruffling it together

with a border of nylon booms

made of human hair

II.

on the shore of our small lake

a man chases goslings

with a kayak paddle

and beats them to death

he gathers their tiny bodies

and disposes of them

in a hidden grave

cattails and water-lilies

languish under his tarpaulins

herbicides obliterate slender rushes

III.

children playing

near the water’s edge

watch waterfowl

adrift in a bowl of dirty water

Third Division (grad students/adults) Third Prize

Down the Road

by Shelley Hudson

Daddy dressed the squirrel

on a tree, slicing blood gristle

flesh, while we leaned, transfixed,

on our bikes. When he was done,

we shoved off; playing cards

fluttered in the spokes

as fast as heartbeats.

Later, over stew, we fought

about who got the tail. Until the next

rain, blood in the bark resembled

a face, eyeing the sacred ornament

flying from the handlebars

of the girl catching breaths

in an anxious wind.

A bird called from the woods.

She turned to hear what

she wanted to remember and one day

put a name to. Until then nothing

anyone could give her would be

greater than finding ease

in her own skin again.

Main menu

Search form

You are here

Annual Poetry Contest - 2011 Winners