Open to All poets

All Poems are to be submitted via Submittable.

First Prize Winners also receive a free, one year membership in the Connecticut Poetry Society (CPS). Winning poems will be recognized in the Connecticut River Review and posted on the CPS website.

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2026 Judge Jefferson Singer

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2025 Connecticut Poetry Award Winners

First Place: Sara Shea, Weaverville, NC

Customs

Coming through US Customs from Ecuador,
the passport agent asks if I have anything to declare.

I know he’s not asking about
duty-free indulgences,
exotic perfumes or rare cigars.

He isn’t referring to bitter cacao or
sun-soaked coffee beans.

Yes, I’ve tucked a few seeds in my pocket-
granadilla seeds wrapped in foil,
the last taste of home I shared
in my grandfather’s Guayaquil courtyard,

but that’s not what he means.

Crossing borders from Ecuador into the United States,
the passport agent repeats, “Anything to declare?”

I picture my grandmother,
in A-line dresses, wide-brimmed hats
with frangipani blossoms in her hair,
sipping sangria along El Malecón.
1940s’ Guayaquil held the promise of fortune
in rice, bananas, oil.

I picture my grandfather, El Capitan!
Navigating the Guayas River, leaving port by starlight-
sexton in hand, handsome in his jacket with brass buttons,
gold embroidery, shoulder epaulets.

They were running early petrol tankers through
the Panama Canal. It was a marvel, then!
They wagered on a love that would outlast
malaria, revolutions, temptations, typhoons.

Coming through the Department of Homeland Security
from Ecuador to Miami International Airport,
the question lingers – “anything to declare?”

I should declare the apologies. The explanations.
The what-ifs. The missing photographs.
The heartaches that have haunted
my grandparents, their parents,
their children and grandchildren.

Coming through customs onto US soil,
I could declare that the marriages, affairs, actions
and decisions of one generation stretch exponentially
through families for lifetimes to come.

Instead, I shrug,
knowing seeds easily drift
from their roots in the winds of change.

The passport agent asks
my reason for travel.
I answer, “Family.”
He nods, calls me an American, and
stamps my passport.

Judge Ellen Hirning Schmidt Remarks:

“Customs”   First Place   

The poem’s title “Customs” is perfect for this marvelous, many-faceted poem.  The poet expertly takes us into the complex life of an immigrant and by extension into all our lives because we all come from somewhere.  That somewhere has its own customs, traditions, and family history.  None of us is “from here”.  In going through Customs, the question “Do you have anything to declare?” acts as a Greek chorus or refrain, posed again and again throughout the poem. The question elicits many answers in the narrator’s/poet’s thoughts and memories.  I should declare…I could declare…

We are introduced to their grandparents’ lives by setting us down in actual places with plants and rivers filling in the sense of home, placing us in an already painted picture.  Leading the way, the poet catalyzes a realization that as we grow up and get older, we gain a more expansive understanding of our identities.   Although unique, each family holds what-ifs, missing photographs, heartaches that have haunted my grandparents, their parents, their children and grandchildren that make us all alike as well.

All immigrants – and we are all immigrants in the United States – are far flung in a continuity of movement, all of us making our way.   In the pocket of the narrator poet are actual seeds, acting as touchstones while waiting in the Customs line.  We all carry the seeds of who we are with us.  We carry the various knowns and unknowns of our identities. From these seeds we set down roots to grow new lives.

At the end of the poem, the Customs official declares the poet “American”.  And so are we all, contributing unique stories of our ancestors and cultures at the same time as we form new identities.  In addition to the consummate crafting of this poem, it couldn’t be timelier

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Second Place: Christine Andersen, Storrs Mansfield, CT

Visiting Edith

After her marriage dissolved,
my friend built a house filled with sunlight
and began collecting rocks.
“This is my new start,” she said.

The stones line the path to her doorstep,
fill her gardens,
and decorate her bathrooms.
She likes gray ones
with a single white stripe,
smooth against the palm of her hand.
She tells me those are the ones honed in a river,
mellowed by years of both amiable and petulant currents,
abandoned in rock beds for decades,
or centuries,
after the water dried up.

When we walk together,
she stops and picks up more.
Fills her pockets or lugs a large one home.
She has an eagle eye for the stripes.

The next time I visit her house,
I see she has turned the new rocks into art,
bookends, and a doorstop.
She has filled glass bowls on the coffee tables
as if the stones were fruit.

Sitting on her blue couch
in the early spring breeze
while Edith brews peppermint tea,
I feel a river run through.

Judge Ellen Hirning Schmidt Remarks:

“Visiting Edith” – Second Place

What a joy to accompany the poet on a visit to their friend in her home-built house filled with sunlight! The poet tenderly shows us Edith’s new start after a divorce. A great strength of this poem is the understated role of the poet, who deftly avoids coloring, directing, bringing attention or inserting themself into it. Edith has collected stones to line her new life. These abandoned stones, mellowed-by-time are the ones honed in a river. They feel smooth in the palm of Edith’s hand – and the poet’s and ours, too. Feeling those stones gives us a sense of Edith’s new identity – beautiful, firm, and solid. The stones line the path to her doorstep… She has filled glass bowls on coffee tables as if the stones were fruit. Edith has restored her life, in fact, built a new one after what we imagine to be a traumatic time. A new identity comes to life. Or perhaps it was there all the time during the marriage and only now can flourish. Her quiet courage is palpable, recognizable, and reaches right into the heart.

What an endearing feeling of beauty, of peace in the last stanza. We join the poet in Edith’s house, sitting on her blue couch…while Edith brews peppermint tea…I feel the harmony, the gentle joy of the poet in the final line while waiting for the tea, I feel a river run through. “Visiting Edith” is a profound gem.

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Third Place: M.Soledad Caballero, Pittsburgh, PA

Spoons

I have taken to stealing spoons
all kinds, all sorts and species
heavy, skinny, bruised, big oval
mouthed and scratched. They are
the moons on a table, waiting
for the sun, vivid, bursting in bright
they carry, they keep, they are
oracles for what can still happen
in the middle of the meal.
Sometimes I order soup in summer
just to find the fairy one I’ve missed
the one I am still looking for
still needed in a collection,
the one to hide amidst daily
knives and forks. Spoons are
made for holding, they linger, lying
in their shine silent and ready
for the wildness that could still come.
Their shapes glorious soaking bowls,
the girthy, open, wide hippy ones,
dainty sugary ones, the long
tentacled ones luxuriating on
soft linen, lying in repose,
just because they can. I steal
them when the mood ripe and wet
catches me, and the siren call sings
me into trance. My purse waiting,
a stone cave, the place in-between
crime and glory. Ricardo does not
approve, scours menus for danger,
daily specials, things for scooping,
my redlight smile. But it’s no use.
Spoons live on tables. And I want them.
Once, once every now and then I resist.
I leave the restaurant empty,
with no magnificence. And we drive
home quiet, maybe even happy.
We enter through the backdoor
lights come on, shoes come off,
night has been around for hours.
And our sleep routines begin,
the stretching and tooth and hair
brushing, twilight morning alarm
setting, the joking and laughing,
complaining about the what’s
and when’s of the next day.
My dress thrown off, wilting on
the brown chair in the corner,
his shoes stacked, clumsy inside
the closet, jacket on the bed, ready
for hanging, ready for the next meeting.
We are moving to our beats. We are
twirling to the muscle memory
of our decades together. We are
small comets in a quiet world.
And then, he reaches inside the jacket,
inside the inner masculine patriarchy
pocket, and like the pink of a sunset,
the shimmer of shells, like the silver
of clouds, there, there, there
the spoon I resisted.

Judge Ellen Hirning Schmidt Remarks

Spoons – Third Place

I couldn’t help myself from smiling, charmed by this wonderful and quirky poem. Spoons immediately grabs you in astonishment at the narrator’s odd hobby of pilfering spoons from restaurants. The poet’s penchant is not indiscriminate, is not random. We are drawn in with the detail and imagery the poet uses to describe what each spoon means to her. There are indeed perceptive insights and beautiful language embedded in the metaphor. Spoons are oracles for what can still happen/in the middle of a meal…[they] are made for holding, they linger, lying/in their shine silent and ready/for the wildness that could still come.

Passion? Obsession? As the poem develops, there is so much more, the poet’s revelation of deeper themes, My purse waiting/a stone cave, the place in-between/crime and glory. And with the lines Ricardo does not/approve, we realize that there is a relationship at the heart of this poem. We are taken with this couple – the narrator and Ricardo – and we are taken home by them, too, these small comets in a quiet world. They are two people who know each other well, have been together decades. The poet shows us this as we watch their getting-ready-for-bed tasks and routines. My dress thrown off, wilting on the brown chair is among my favorite images. The end of this poem is a dazzler. Ricardo reaches into his jacket pocket where he has stealthily hidden the treasure, like the pink of a sunset, /the shimmer of shells, like the silver/of clouds, there, there, there/the spoon I resisted. This couple after many years together, knowing one another so well, still surprise one another with galvanizing joy. And with that, the real treasure, their love, is revealed.

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Honorable Mention: Hannah Huddleston, Middlefield, CT

Gardener’s Wrath

I descend on the garden with vengeance
Armed with gloves trowel and spade
Bucket swinging at my step
The grass still wears its dewy night jewels
The sky full of chirping song and newborn light
I cry out at the carnage!
My cabbages chewed and chomped
Riddled with holes
Leaves like lace
The self indulgent slugs
Lounge across the stems satisfied
Feast finished bellies full
I bend and begin
Plucking off their soft gooey bodies
Flinging into the bucket each
With a satisfactory plunk
Any thought of nurturing
The soil and soul forgotten
Fiercely protecting
What fresh new life is mine

Judge Ellen Hirning Schmidt Remarks:

Honorable Mention: Gardener’s Wrath

I loved reading this playful poem, which juxtaposes the gardener’s joy in planting, raising, and tending life with their enacted battle with other life forms – the slugs in this case – that also need to eat. While appreciating the scene of beauty in the early morning The grass wears its dewy night jewels/ The sky full of chirping sound and newborn light, the gardener comes upon a horror of carnage. The narrator spares no indicting verbs for the ravages of the slugs – chewed, chomped, riddled with holes. (Do we not use those same verbs as we eat the same veggies?) As the wife of a gardener for the last half century, I am familiar with this scene. I chuckled envisioning the narrator flinging slugs’ gooey bodies. But this same outraged horticulturalist is also laughing at themself, Any thought of nurturing/The soil and soul forgotten. In one breath the gardener confers a death sentence on the self-indulgent slugs and at the same time unabashedly ends the poem with a self-satisfied, dare I say self-indulgent, mine. What a pleasure to read this poem, smiling all the way through its refreshing humor, while not failing to notice the self-reflective foibles any of us can have when overcome with a particular passionate goal.

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Honorable Mention: Tim Stobierski, Ansonia, CT

Untied States

Such delicate thread
wedding selvedge to selvedge—
and here, a man pulls

until the seams gap
and in the spaces between:
his eyes, his tongue, his

fingers—grabbing through.
There was a time I believed
that our thread could hold

dreams of all brothers
unfrayed, and still somehow be
binding—like tendon—

but that was before
I came to know some brothers
dreamed with glee of death,

before I saw more
trade the blood of their daughters,
the blood of their sons—

queer, brown, and other—
for cheap eggs, tax breaks, and guns.
As blocks come apart

and the backing falls
and the chill settles around,
tell me, my brother—

when you wipe their blood
from your hands and from your lips
—brother, is it warm?

Judge Ellen Hirning Schmidt Remarks:

Honorable Mention: Untied States

The poet has crafted a powerful poem within the boundaries of nine tight triplets. Each line, each stanza leads to the next. There are threads that bind us together as a nation, perhaps those of the flag, that symbolize the values we have always held in common, even when not always living up to them. Once bolstered by the belief that our thread could hold/dreams of all brothers/unfrayed, and still somehow be/binding -like tendon, the narrator awakened when, a man pulls/ until the seams gap. We recognize that man, those men. The poet has become disillusioned that some in our country dream gleefully of the death of others. These people are willing to trade the blood of the other – black, brown, queer, anyone different – for cheap eggs, tax breaks, and guns. There is no doubt that the narrator means the wanton crimes against our fellow man (and by extension also women and children) that the current US governmental administration is perpetrating. The narrator’s rage rises to a pitch when addressing fellow Americans who have abandoned or sold their decency, tell me, my brother-/when you wipe their blood/ from your hands and from your lips/-brother, is it warm? The poet leaves us with the penetrating question: Do the cold-blooded orchestraters and administrators of hatred find even a drop of the milk of human kindness left in them?

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Honorable Mention: Khalisa Rae Thompson, Durham, NC

Grass Grows Over Everything

and it had gotten long. Not wild enough

to swallow a child, but unruly—
enough to whisper disobedience.

She didn’t knock.
Didn’t ask how we were holding up.
Just folded a page of HOA rules,
underlined in red like a wound,
and slid it into our doorframe
like a summons.

No greeting.
No neighborly grace.
Just quiet judgment in twelve-point font.

Maybe it wouldn’t have pierced so deep
if we weren’t the only Black family
on this side of the cul-de-sac.
If Eric hadn’t just lost work.
If the days weren’t already heavy
with performance—
with trying to appear
stable, clean-cut, unbothered.

But there it was:
proof that someone had been watching,
counting blades of grass
like sins.

The next morning,
I went outside with bare hands
and yanked the dead
flowers
from their beds—
petals falling like small apologies
I never got to give myself.

Then I drove to Lowe’s
and
filled my cart with color—
begonias, marigolds,
flowers I had no business buying,
knowing I’d likely forget to water them.

Still, I planted them.
Still, I called three lawn care companies,
left voicemails thick with urgency,
as if a mowed lawn could save us.

All because
I wanted her to see me trying.
See us—
tidy, trimmed, controlled.

Not messy.
Not loud.
Not threatening.

I could’ve left a note of my own.
Could’ve said:
we’re tired.
we’re mourning.
we’re in between blessings.
Instead, I let her dictate the rhythm of my day,
my money, my shame.

Now she make snide remarks like,
Your grass really wants you to water it.

The truth?
We didn’t cut the grass.
We were busy surviving.
And that should’ve been enough.

But I forgot myself.
Let her presence shrink me.
Let a patch of grass decide my worth.

That’s the part I can’t shake—
how quickly I traded my peace
for her approval.

How I stood there,
sweating in the midday sun,
planting
flowers
I didn’t believe in,
hoping something soft
might bloom from my guilt.

Judge Ellen Hirning Schmidt Remarks

Honorable Mention: Grass Grows Over Everything

Each time I read this poem, I am moved by this simple, yet complex story told with honesty and courage. It is difficult to write a long poem without running the risk of wordiness, but this poem narrates a story in the first person that is tight and economic in language. The stanzas and line spacing are airy giving us, in the urgency of the story, also time to take in its gravity. It is an everyday unpleasant experience with a neighbor – except that it isn’t. The lawn length, a proverbial point of contention between suburban neighbors, this neighbor’s callousness is depicted in the first few stanzas. But then the poet reveals, if we weren’t the only Black family and suddenly, we experience a ratcheted obnoxiousness, unadorned racism ineffectively disguised by grass length. No cordiality in the deliverance of the neighbor’s complaint, HOA rules/ underlined in red like a wound…slid into our doorframe like a summons. This quiet judgment in twelve-point font is piercing. The family has had heavy losses recently and feels burdened in trying to get through each day and put up appearances. The narrator’s rage is palpable as she rips up flowers, drives in a frenzy to buy more that she knows she won’t be able to maintain, all the while seeing herself being watched by the neighbor. But the narrator is also consumed by other complicated feelings – the desire and the exhaustion of trying to be accepted in the neighborhood, the guilt for not standing up to the neighbor, Could’ve said:/we’re tired. /we’re mourning. /we’re in between blessings. Instead, her rage turns inward, I let her dictate the rhythm of my day, /my money, my shame. She has lost herself, trading my peace/ for her approval. The narrator’s brilliant use of metaphor depicts the ubiquity of racism masquerading everywhere that grass grows.

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Ellen Hirning Schmidt: Judge 2025 Connecticut Poetry Award Contest

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2024 Connecticut Poetry Award Winners

FIRST PLACE:  Arlene DeMaris

Telling the Hive

Knock first to get their attention. Call them out of their city,
away from their industry of pollen and wax. Break the news

gently, inserting the name of your dead. Say what you’ve rehearsed
about the comfort of ceremony, the soul waiting just offstage

and angels wandering in, taking their places on the ceiling.
But in fact you are here to multiply your grief by the number

of wings that will carry it. To make a relic of sweetness.
To say, each absconding is new whenever it happens.

And the ones behind it, the line so long it disappears.
Tell the hive this is not the worst that can happen, but it is

the last. Tell what you disbelieved that morning until the fog
cleared and you saw its bare branches. Tell what the earth

was doing to itself that day, the hills greening up, covered
in starlings pulling the pale wet bodies of slugs from the soil.

Judge’s remarks:
When Queen Elizabeth II died, the royal beekeeper attached black bows on the hives before informing the bees that their queen was dead. Curious about how the poem would utilize this tradition, the first line “Knock first to get their attention” immediately pulled me into “Telling the Hive” and I continued to be impressed every time I returned to Arlene DeMaris’ masterful poem which is actually a very complex exploration of death, the ultimate human mystery, and that in fact, DeMaris depicts the difficulty we all face in dealing with death when it occurs to others and also how confronting it personally by telling the hive is a way to multiply grief “by the number of wings that will carry it.”. Trying to make a “relic of sweetness” the speaker tells the hive “it is not the worst that can happen” but adds “but it is the last.” The final graphic image of starlings “pulling the pale wet bodies of slugs from the soil” conveys an unvarnished message about the constant presence of death hovering over us all.

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SECOND PLACE:  Shellie Harwood

Little Boy in Gaza

In my nightgown still,
fleece robe drawn tight against me
from the first fall morning’s chill.
I let you pour my coffee, swirling with white cream,
into the worn red mug,
let my fingers wrap like a lover’s around it,
pull it close against my cheek.
Old trees trail their aching fingers
across the window panes, beckoning,
but I am drunk with the luxury of peace.
You kiss the top of my head, child that I am,
and we stand together as always in this season of departure,
rapt in the explosion of autumn’s topaz, flame and sweet burnt umber.
You click the remote, quite absently,
in that casual way we usher in the morning headlines,
jolted back from splendor to the harsh and reckless day.
And I hear the man say,
There is a little boy in Gaza,
taken without his glasses.
It weighs on his father to think of Ohad lost in a dark place.
He cannot manage. His father says it twice.
Ohad cannot manage.
He will quake from war he cannot see.
A blast of leaves rain heavy down, explode outside our window,
forming colored craters in the yellowing yard.
I feel the coffee spill, watch it splatter
across the ivory robe that has fallen open,
that no longer warms me.
And I think of the terrible noise to come
of dead stars falling, of bodies falling across and behind the border,
bombs and mortar shells,
the fall of each tiny lens
beneath the crush of frantic feet.

And little matters now,
but that Ohad is lost in dark without his glasses.
I close my eyes, I hear you close your eyes behind me.
Little boy,
better not to see.

Judge’s remarks:
I was drawn to “Little Boy in Gaza” at once because it captures the struggle I and many of us have each day to reconcile our lives of ease “drunk with the luxury of peace” with the constant media coverage of obliterating wars and the deaths that multiply day by day that threaten to numb and desensitize us. Writing a poem about a child or a political poem presents a challenge and Shellie Harwood manages to accept and overcome the inherent difficulty of the subjects She succeeds in writing about both a political struggle and a boy by focusing on one child, Ohad, a child in Gaza, making him unique by adding the masterful detail that he was “taken without his glasses” by soldiers. Harwood contrasts the “bombs and mortar shells” with “the fall of each tiny lens.” We are left with the picture of Ohad “lost in dark without his glasses” as Harwood addresses him and perhaps us in the conclusion to the poem: “Little boy, better not to see.”

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THIRD PLACE:  Lauren Crawford

What I Have in Common with a Shovelhead Shark

We’re on the bay boat thirty miles deep into the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve got a shark
that’s too big for my pole on the line. It takes forty-five minutes to reel it in.
When the line gets too rough, step-Sir takes over and gives my arms a break.

This is a fight with a creature we don’t yet know. But somehow, Sir knows.
Before the long, amber tail flicks a little too close to the surface, before that

pointed nose thrashes through the water, he somehow knows what I’ve got.
My arms ache, my sun-stained forehead sweats, and I’m out of breath trying
to rip my prize from its home, from everything it knows. Soon enough though,

the fight is over, we win, and all five massive feet of the shark is in the boat with us,
razor teeth slashing, that wicked tail wreaking havoc, knocking lures, bobbers

and apple slivers overboard. I back away, not knowing what to do, but Sir
rushes forward and begins bashing that shovelhead with his fist right between the eyes.
I have to knock him out, he says, or he’ll hurt someone when we try to handle him.

Bang goes Sir’s fist; bang, bang, bang. It takes a while, the shark is strong,
but for once, I am grateful for his violence. For once, its function is truly protection.

Each blow slows the shark’s stuttering movements until his knuckles begin to bleed.
For once, we all agree it’s necessary and I can’t stop looking at those dorsal veins popping,
the swift, elegant force of his swings. How brutally beautiful it must be to kill a king.

When it’s over, Sir’s hand is wrecked. Out of water, their skin is like sandpaper,
he tells me, feel him. And I do. I run my hands along my catch, down that long, golden

body leaking the Gulf from his gills. In my mind I try to piece together where I belong,
how I am meant to live but all I can hear is that stiff, hollow sound, that bang
rattling the boat like a signal, like I’m simply waiting for something to end.

Judge’s remarks:
The specific and unflinching detail of “What I Have in Common with a Shovelhead Shark” stayed with me on multiple reads. Lauren Crawford creates a speaker who  is very aware of what she is doing in “trying to rip my prize from its home, from everything it knows.” The bestial nature of the shark with “razor teeth slashing, that wicked tail wreaking havoc,” is not a surprise, but the brutality of Sir, the captain, is startling as he bashes the shovelhead between the eyes with his fist until his knuckles bleed and the shark’s dorsal veins pop. The speaker runs her hands down the shark as if it is a lover with its “long, golden body leaking the Gulf from his gills.” Raising the questions inherent in the killing of another species for the sport of it, the speaker ponders “where I belong, how I am meant to live” but offers no rationale or excuse for the fish’s death. She leaves the reader wondering about the title and if it is the brutality, the bestiality that the fish and the speaker have in common.

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Judge’s remarks:
John Paul Caponigro’s “Everyone In Your Dream Is You” feels dreamlike in its illogical logic and fanciful style. “If you fall from a great height, catch yourself,” which is only possible in dreamland. Or “eternity is a blink, a blink is eternity.” Or “You are the egg and the egg layer.” The reader is constantly off balance, rather like dreamers who wake with a jolt, feeling as if they are falling, relieved to discover they are not. Pondering these imponderables, the reader notices that certain words have been crossed out. “Watch some body your body caught in waves.” This attention getting device is directly related to a constant struggle the individual faces trying to preserve a unique identity in the face of the constant bombardment from influencers in the social media: “One self is always drowning in another self.” The reader is pulled into the struggle to maintain the self by reading the lines both ways, both with the words lined out and not, which also adds to the otherworldly feeling of the poem. Finally, even the title suggests a double reading: “Everyone in Your Dream is You.” Does this mean the reader, the writer, or both? John Paul Caponigro has created an intriguing poem that invites multiple readings and will stay with the reader long after the page is put down.

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Honorable Mention:  Deborrah Corr

Night Vision
 
On our backs in the grass my sister
aimed her flashlight upward as if
its feeble beam could penetrate the night
 
and teach me to trace the constellations.
Stories in the sky.  How the Greeks
or their gods hurled their enemies or allies
 
against the black expanse.  And still they hung
for me to find the outlines of their transformation.
I pretended I could see, could believe what she
 
told me, just to keep her there, keep her
speaking into the dark.  If I lay now in that yard,
long ago plowed under, where would I find
 
the form of my sister?  There’s no weight to hold
her indentation on a lawn made of memory.
When my daughter died, her friends told their son
 
she was now a star in the heavens.  Look up.
You’ll see her shining.  Their boy, at three, had sat
on her hospital bed and read to her–
 
was it Cat in the Hat or Go Dog Go?  At the end
of each page, he looked up and aimed his dimpled
smile at her, the joy of the words she’d taught him
 
sparkling on his teeth.  And she, by-passing pain,
gleamed a grin back at him.  I search the night sky.
I am overwhelmed by glowing mass.  So pointless
 
to think I could ever find her.  The stars answer back
with more stars, the poet tells me.  My sister’s
flashlight can’t create her shape.  The truth is,
 
I don’t believe it.  Nor did my daughter.
When I asked, in her last days, what she
thought was coming, her answer was quick:
 
nothing  it’s the end  lights out.  Truth is,
I wanted an answer from the other side.
Truth is, I wanted to be left a spark.
  
I want her life, shortened though it was,
to be narrated every night by points of light.
Once, alone, on that long ago lawn,
 
I stared up as twilight dimmed the sky. It was
the color of the lilacs that breathed their scent
into the cooling air.  Night, a thick liquid,
 
flowed down the curves of the inverted bowl above me. 
My eyes scanned the arc, waiting for what I knew
would appear–the first freckle of a star, so dim
 
I almost believed I’d made it up, but when
I looked away and back again, there it was
shining brighter.  Then they all rushed in,
 
blinking on as if they couldn’t wait to be awake
and watching the world.  Now it was all
blackness, spread with fields of gold.
 
That was the time I believed in a god and the stars
of his creation.  I believed in the invisible. 
How too much daylight can keep you from seeing.
 
I called my sister two days before she died,
checking in about her heart.  She was up
and cleaning.  I told her she should be in bed.
 
Let someone else do the chores.  She’d been
talking with God, she said.  That was all
the help she needed.  I failed to call again.
 
I had failed her so many times before.  I know
She could never quite forgive me, when,
As a newly-formed adult, I dropped the faith.
 
But we choreographed a careful dance
around the tender, burnt flesh of that topic. 
It left us untouchable. 
 
410 light years from earth, seven sisters cluster 
inside Taurus, the bull. A safe place Zeus made for girls
pursued by a hunter. My sister’s God was never so protective.
 
Last April we lit a candle to celebrate
my daughter’s fiftieth–a decade of years
she never got to count. In Spring, Virgo returns–
 
Persephone reunited with Demeter, the mother
who laid the earth barren to get her child back.
How powerless I am.
 
My daughter, when she was five, lay beside me
on a blanket.  As night slipped in, with its first faint stars,
she said it was like they were squeezed from a tube.
 
She reached out and plucked one,
and placed it on her tongue.

Note:  the poem contains a quote from Victoria Chang’s “Starlight, 1962” in With My Back to the World

Judge’s remarks:
The difficulty in writing a lengthy poem is uniting the various strands and, of course, keeping the reader’s interest. Deborah Corr does a masterful job of both in “Night Vision.” She pulls the reader into the poem by depicting her and her sister on their backs identifying constellations of stars which inserts Greek myths of gods who hurled them into the sky. The subjects of stars, her sister and Greek myth are then woven into the poem’s tapestry.  The reader immediately learns that her sister is dead, saying “There’s no weight to hold her indentation on a lawn made of memory.” The death of the speaker’s daughter is immediately introduced and the astrological relationship is created by a friend who offered consolation saying “she was now a star in the heavens.” The speaker cannot find either her sister or her daughter, revealing what she wants is “to be left a spark.” Continuing to search the night sky, she again threads in Greek myth with the “seven sisters cluster inside Taurus, the bull. A safe place Zeus made for girls.” In spring, she thinks of Virgo then of Persephone reunited with Demeter” a mother who got her child back concluding, “How powerless I am.” Ultimately, the only way to find consolation the speaker offers herself and the reader is to return to memory: her daughter at five who pretends to reach out and place a star on her tongue.

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Honorable Mention:  Kathryn Jordan

Solitary Bee
 
Three days in the house of my old father.
He sits, hunched over, thumbing pages of
 
a piece written to honor him, determined
to point out mistakes. I offer an apology.
 
He says, Are you sorry for what you did
or that you wrote it? Then, You know what
 
I think. I take the bait: “Why isn’t this over?”
My father is silent, still scrolling my work.
 
I go to my room, consider the cost to fly
home today. Through a dark glass, I see
 
a bee hovering at the open window, which
I rush to close to a crack, lest a bug enter
 
or—God forbid—a wild, fresh prairie wind.
The bee lands near a hole in the lock, starts
 
to dig, tiny legs tugging at tiny bits of web
and shit, squeezing its body into an opening
 
scarcely larger than itself, emerging to kick
away traces of clinging clotted matter. She
 
flies off, returning to clear the space inside
over and over. Does she never tire of this? 
 
The sun goes down behind still-bare trees,
washing the prairie of light. All is hushed
 
and calm, though I don’t know what changed.
I crouch by the window, peering out, hoping
 
she can rest, solitary bee, hidden in her cave.

Judge’s remarks:
In“Solitary Bee,” Kathryn Jordan utilizes I.A. Richards’ concept of vehicle and tenor in her poem by artfully utilizing a bee’s activity to explore the real subject of the poem which is the speaker’s troubled relationship with her father. What is so significant is the way in which the speaker conveys her sorrow without sinking into sentiment. In doing so, she touches a universal problem of the only too common continuing struggle between children and parents which is frequently not resolved before or after death. The speaker has come seeking her father’s love, his approval by sharing a lengthy tribute. Rather than react with gratitude, he proceeds to “points out mistakes.” Falling into an old pattern, she apologizes.  Going even further, he critiques her pages and brings up past sins: “Are you sorry for what you did?” Fleeing back to her room, the speaker shows her disappointment by contemplating the cost of flying home early. Offering a glimpse into her childhood where opening a window risked letting in a bug or fresh air, she sees a bee, who like the speaker returns over and over to a small hole in the window trying to carve out space. The speaker must be referring to herself when she asks, “Does she never tire of this?” Offering some solution for her own struggle, she hopes the bee “can rest, solitary bee, hidden in her cave.”

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Past Judges