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Second Place
Third Place
Honorable Mentions
Richard Hammer
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Most recent book read, "The Zahir", by Paul Coelho. Current daily practice book, "Transform Your Life - A Year of Awareness Practice", by Cheri Huber Current Wisdom Quotes: "Without action, without decision, you remain in possibility, which is safe and beautiful but eventually enervating and boring." - Jennifer Louden "Close your eyes. Feel your heart." - Zack (age 3) Richard has a website at www.wholenessyoga.com To touch the earth and smile. This is enough. Yet there is that yearning for the wind to carry me beyond this place. I would know the perfection that is this moment Yet allow the wonder of it to remain unclaimed. I am consumed by the sun of my being. It feeds upon itself unconfined, a burning to create the light for each new step. The questions of what makes this soil red, how far the universe extends, and the possibility of soul mates remain unanswered While the inch worm works its way along the edge of a nearby leaf. |
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Kimberlee Gerstmann
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(haiku) Typical- Late-70s evening watching M*A*S*H* in front of a 19-inch color Toshiba, sans cable; antenna only. Hawkeye Pierce, a surrogate father, during the dinner hour. In the midst of peaceful noshing, a fight erupts between the girl and the boy. No one admits who It was the boy. started it. Its evolution no longer matters; annoyance supersedes a mother's patience. Her children stare as she tells them what brats they are to ignore the extravagance of takeout food on her non-existent budget. Hawkeye cracks a joke. Mom does not laugh; her temper glows mustard yellow. Emotional fireworks explode, culminating with a splat. Mom, feasting on rage, do you want fries with that? flings a fist-squished hamburger against the living room wall, shooting loaded syllables at her children who hear only three out of every five angry words, (but feel the sting that stays with them for years) and watch in wide-eyed horror, frozen, as the one-bite-missing burger s---l---i---d---e---s to the floor, leaving a bloody trail of condiments and a straggling pickle behind its bun. Spencer, the boy's (female) cat runs to the wreckage. Small white teeth nibble eagerly on the mangled victim; licking beef-stained lettuce from her fortunate shag-carpet picnic. "I need a drink!" Hawkeye shouts in his tinny, non-stereo voice. Mom starves on the couch alone; salty tears washing down her dinner while kids pass the ketchup in silent shame. the final credits roll. |
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Patricia A. Boutilier
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I. I bake a tres leches for the Mother's Day feast, cold, grainy, milky,moist, a last, sweet promise to my gathering family that I can still nurse them with the wisdom of God, though my breasts are dry, my belly slack. II. Hours before, I stood sweltering in the Florida humidity, silently witnessing for peace, meditating on what change I can effect in the world, watching a teen-age mother wipe dandelion milk from her toddler's sticky fingers. III. Now, at twilight, the grandchildren and I, dance ring-around-the-rosie splashing in the pool as we all fall down under the Milky Way. My daughter sits cross-legged beneath the budding red-orange poinciana suckling her youngest. Above, I hear the humming of all my great, silent grandmothers streaming through the heavens. |
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Megan Davis
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I stand in the center of the room clutching books, clutching phone, my Tuesday flowers in a corner of my desk I never would have cleaned so soon but for Friday flowers, and where to put them? I see rain sounds, hear water thoughts. Some crazed bird purports to sing. Some impetuous thunder grips me up and down. Windows open, and alone, I stand in the center of the room. |
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Amanda Moore
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This is where the armies meet; swings now still in after-dinner gloom, slides whose empty chutes gleam in young moonlight, monkey bars lonely for monkeys. Pavement pictures will be erased by overnight rain; drop by drop, smearing smiley faces and animals that only walk and stalk in imagination and chalk. This is where you find friends and lose them again to casualties. This is where battles you fight for respect and the right to play in the tower are held. This is where you learn to fall, and get up, and keep playing the game. This is where you discover frogs, the opposite sex, and life is unfair. This is where you realize the meaning of life, then it disappears with your childhood. This is where that grassy hill in the meadow that triples as a soccer or baseball field or another world, is a mountain, and you could be king of where the armies meet. . |
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Carol E. Ayer
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We drove past oil refineries in our usual state of discord, crossed the railroad tracks in an argument with no caboose. When we arrived we had snacks-- the cheese, like the conversation, too strong for me; the dip an octave too bitter. The others ate rum ice cream while I watched the Brady Bunch in a room long since abandoned. I unwrapped a Hostess cupcake, its artificial taste a reminder that life, like this day, was only sweet in make-believe. |
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David W. Clary
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The fires out. Aways, down the beach, over the dune that we used to lie on, the waves slap the shore; beat on it like futile condemnation. Im shivering from the cold that crept in as the last log collapsed and gave up and the fog rolled in to shutter the stars. Still, in the pit, proudly dying, the orange embers of this great consuming fire linger. Hoping, as the life pours out of them like marbled lava that something - anything - will come summon the flames again. But its late. And Im tired. And you went to bed ages ago. I pour the water, and watch love sputter and die. |
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Carol Moore
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Sleep and I are dancing around She has just not settled over My mind It surges with thoughts, things, and layers of emotions Maybe too much caffeine Or, just a menopause morning Up before the starlings and cowbirds Fighting over the copper birdbath One-week an indigo bunting The next week cowbirds A robin has taken to pulling worms out of the garden He comes several times a day Two morning doves joined him Eating seeds cast from residue of weed pulling Cardinals, sparrows, finches, blue jays, An abundance of birds call our yard home Home to the largest holly tree in town Home to a woman getting ready to pack art swaps Before she crawls back into bed. |
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