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Second Place
Third Place
Honorable Mentions
Kathleen Ivanoff
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Anatomy of the Star Goddess She's wandering in a fog of evaporated desire. It's like dry ice, or the exhalation of a film noir siren smoking alone in a blue room. There is not enough gravity to fasten a plan. She makes notes to herself and pins them to things But they fold into a flock of speckled birds with wings that say 'to do' and 'today' then wave good-bye lettering the sky. The hyperbolic chambers in her heart puff and toot and beat algorithmically to the north, always north! She longs for a sad southern swamp. The old crocodile voodoo: Something to want. When the mask of her sex is removed, She quits smoking and becomes droll. Invisible, she doesn't need to sneak but she keeps the habit of ripening clouds with enormous sighs: Peonies, cups, wedding gowns, fainted ladies, a fountain. The tunnel to heaven is decorated with hiding, elapsed lists, and chants, enchants and chance. As first place winner in the Poetic Idol Competition, Kathleen won a prize package that includes a $150.00 cash prize; an e-Chapook of her poetry (up to 20 poems), attractively created and published for her personal or commercial use; public status as Artella's Poetic Idol in Residence; a feature interview in an issue of e-Artella; guaranteed publication in an e-Artella issue; free enrollment in her choice of Artella e-courses, the Artella eBook, "Behind the Veil", her choice of any e-Artella issue, and one month FREE Artella membership. Click here for contest details. |
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Tara McDaniel
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The Harvest I. You're pulling me down & it's peeling the skin off a plum that thin, soft whisper laid over my tongue like a blessing of the Eucharist. II. I lay my body down at the edge of the water. I'm dreaming that your torso is an undulating wreath of blossoms atop the blue surface. III. And I am all the time wondering over the hothouse of my own desires, looking for a book of fruit to dissemble your texture, the taste of opening my mouth inside your own. IV. You remind me of redder days, the way you've always upended how I thought the world would be honey bees striking their bodies internal chambers pistons and shallow boxes wild buzz echoing along the slender tendril of the willow weeping its dress into the long grass. V. I wanted to know what is warm to the touch, then you parted the curtain, became the thought behind the veil, oh, oh, how the skin gets blistered over on your honey dew plantation |
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Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
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Fever Or Forgotten Wings (title from Poetry, by Pablo Neruda) And then Poetry came And there was no money in it Still, some clouds parted while others grew richer in hue. The night sky invoked diamonds, blood, velvet The ocean: cascades of sapphire, seduction, liquid jade Sometimes it was the wind whispering in the trees, Sometimes a mosquito's whine, or a crow raucous in the compost at dawn. There were days I heard everything, and still days I could not bring myself to listen. There were mornings I awoke dissolved by an apparent parade of dreams And afternoons of fever, when my hair went uncombed, my pockets overflowed with paper scraps hastily scrawled, each word a fragile branch at the precipitous edge. It was an exhilarating madness, fear laced with ecstasy, the wings of a schoolgirl's crush. And I had thought I was alive before, but saw then just how shallow my breathing had been |
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L. Darlene Simmemon
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AN ANALOG OF ONENESS (A pantoum) We sleep beneath ourselves - In our undisclosed torment - This room hiding echoes Our hearts soon absorb In confidential torment, We launder the night; Our hearts skillfully absorbing Our own soulish whispers. We launder the night And listen intently - Our own soulish whispers Have no place to go; So listen intently As we garner dead branches (Having no place to go) And spread them like linens. We gather dead branches, And lie down upon them (Having spread them like linens) Wishing for softness, we absorb one another. We lie upon branches (Asleep and beneath us) Wishing for softness - absorbing one another; This room hiding weakness |
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Sherrell R. Wigal
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Funeral Roads I think it was Glenn's new wife that said something 'bout the road. I smiled, a weak smile, because it was a funeral, and I said, "This is the way we bury our people." Twenty, thirty, sometimes forty miles we come. Off the main roads, out the paved roads, sometimes beyond the rock base roads. Through the gaps, through streams, through fields, we come this way, this lightly traveled way, because here where our blood began, where the dead can sleep with family. In bad weather, and in winter those with city-cars or no cars, pile in with us who know the way to drive these roads. Know how to "run" a snow-covered hill, how to "ride" the ruts, how to open and close a cattle gate. Sometimes we come with wagon teams and boots and overalls. This is where we lay the bones of those we love. Our women hold the dying, through the door of death, slip watches, rings and memories into their apron pockets. Our men go early for the digging, pausing at the other markers, remembering, with the turn of each spade, this one, and the others who made our lives complete. This is the way we bury our people. We bring them home across these roads, these hard funeral roads to remind us that this living and this dying are not easy. |
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Sue Neufarth Howard
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CLOUDS AT PLAY, HAMMOCK VIEW Milky blimp clouds scuttle on a windy romp cavort on egg blue lawn tumble roughneck like gamboling schoolboys play tag with the wind revel in hide and seek with buoyant kites translucent stars tussle in a tug of war with a sun ray pinch angel wings crawl belly down to touch the tips of mountains suck lemony candy of afternoon moons playful air show hammock view |
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Megan Elaine Davis
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Fascinating Creature
It is nice to think how one can be recklessly lost in a daisy! -Anne Morrow Lindbergh Recklessly lost in a daisy, she said. But I think the daisy was lost in her. A fascinating creature she should have made a study of herself: petal by petal, the intricacies of her mind. We go all our lives not knowing who we are until we find we rhyme with someone else. I wish I could have known me while I was still alive. |
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Shelley Klammer
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