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Second Place
Third Place
Honorable Mentions
Megan Thompson
Megan Thompson is an educator in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Previously, her work has been published in The American Baháí and The Apostrophe, a peer edited journal out of Saint Francis University. Megan is an active member of the Baháí faith and views poetry as one of many ways to express her spirituality and worship the Creator.
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Foreclosure It echoed like a haunted cave after all the second hand hand-me-downs were out, waiting in the truck, squatting in the dark. Silent, indifferent orphans. We left the closets full, the carpet dirty. It was a desperate escape. The things we abandoned weighed against the future in the cost ratio analysis of the deeply disappointed. Jobless but not yet hopeless. And, triumphantly, in love. "Other couples would have broken up " We said. Dashed against the rocks with the shore in plain sight, as the shipwrecked often are. "Well, thats it " We sighed. Or the house sighed. In a gesture of no hard feelings, I grabbed my last bottle of schnapps and poured it in the sink. Beautiful aerosol halo-- peach and pleasant memories. Glimmering for a moment then falling from grace to the countertop, where each sweet molecule evaporated, a faint, sugary crust for someone else to wipe clean. Still, I felt a little smaller walking away. As first place winner in the Poetic Idol Competition, Megan 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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Dawn Richerson
Dawn Richerson is on a personal quest to cultivate a life of art, healing and faith. She is a painter, poet and published author who is fascinated with the topics of nature, spirituality and creativity, and dreams of traveling around the world one day. Dawn enjoys helping other creative professionals launch their own creative revolutions through the marketing communications company she founded in 1997. She lives in Atlanta with one son, two dogs and a cat.
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The Suicidal Birds Make Their Way to Me From straight ahead and only slightly to the left, he comes barreling toward the glass. I slow too late, and the devil dressed in blue becomes a blur with piercing yellow eyes who falls to pieces in feathers floating high that, of course, remind me of what it is to still love you. The suicidal birds make their way to me law of attraction I'm certain you would say. But I want to live and have just come from fighting my war with a world that would keep me caged and gouge my sight with admonitions to not make a peep, to stay to pre-ordained flight patterns, to let them clip my wings and, most of all, to forget I ever flew anywhere with you. The birds; they all are flying north by northwest. I do my best to catch the wind, to follow. Tonight, I act on impulse as I see my own shadow in the glassy mirror and lunge forward, seeing shattered glass and you when neither are really there. I do not know which way is home again. My feathers plucked, my spirit with the south and you, Ive no strength to fly. Strange bird that I am, squawking in spring, flapping my wings wildly, I believe love will find me. Will you find your way home, too? As the second place winner in the Poetic Idol Competition, Dawnwon a prize package that includes a $50.00 cash prize; 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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Karen Kuklinski
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Generations The soft blue blanket from my Mother's wedding I only use it now and again Threadbare for special occasions From my Grandma, an absent Mom to my Mom I only use it now and again Grasping near the blanket to feel safe From my Grandma, an absent Mom to my Mom My Mom's castoff is my treasure Grasping near the blanket to feel safe I picture my Grandma choosing it My Mom's castoff is my treasure Not knowing how the gift was not enough I picture my Grandma choosing it Hands I never knew touching Not knowing how the gift was not enough Wrapping it for the giving Hands I never knew touching The beautiful soft blue velvety cotton Wrapping it for the giving Her future, never known Granddaughter warmth someday The beautiful soft blue velvety cotton Threadbare for special occasions Her future, never known Granddaughter warmth someday The soft blue blanket from my Mother's wedding As the third place winner in the Poetic Idol Competition, Karen won a prize package that includes a $25.00 cash prize; guaranteed publication in an e-Artella issue; 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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Tammy Vitale
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Observation Here is the poet scrawling in her journal. Overhead blue sky. Nearby yellow plastic tablecloth. Yonder snips of contention, colored red. Tomorrow she will pore over the pages, pluck the gifts left by her psyche or some undesignated energy, take what she discovers, extract and extend it, create an entity subtle but shiny, something she, in turn, can give away. Today I probe the ruined garden searching through dark earth for bulbs needing defense against winters assault. The ants in their nests are frantic with this unexplained, unexpected intrusion, and I think of her - how the accidental arousing of things can initiate an incident so stunning the conventional world comes to an end. |
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Ann McGovern
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Inside My Purse A "passion red" lipstick to smear HELP on a wall, money to buy more lipstick. Of course there are keys, A rusty key to the back gate of heaven, and a key to a box of secrets I forgot, a book so good it never ends. Also, a ticket to a Bogart and Bacall movie, one dancing shoe. Only one. I left the other on a cloud crowded with everybody Ive ever loved. Heres whats not in my purse: love letters from Picasso, a map to the treasure in the northwest corner of the Sierra Madres, a tiny Band-Aid for my broken heart, airline tickets to Dalfour, a little inconsistency among the primroses. Primroses. |
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Eileen Grobeck
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Restless Tonight I contemplate circles, like the halo that surrounds the cheese cloth moon as it spies on me through the window, and wonder if Ill wake to snow. I think about how circles never end and the power they have to keep things apart or together, depending on which arc in the playground you choose to slide down on, and if it will intersect with another. I trace my circular paths and end up ambling backwards to him and I think, all over again, about how hed feel now; try to imagine his skin against mine smooth as a velvet drape; how hed cradle me against the cushioned contours of his chest; how his lips would taste and what hed do to cast the light back into a cobalt sky. |
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Pat Wiley
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Sixty Looms Ahead Lordy, hon, I need someone to bounce And you're it, I guess. Aren't you my friend? So sit back. Hear me: no simpering old lady, me, when I get there. I'll be like Mabel Travis. She said she didn't even feel real until her 65th birthday. She chose to wear a shocking pink blouse. "Loud", Sonny said. But she just looked at him and wore it anyway. And before that birthday dinner out, she ordered beer (in a public place!). "I'll have a Bud", she said. Sonny looked pained. She was proud of her own voice. She hatched out of her restrained lady-self and walked proudly like a pink flamingo fledgling, left the old eggshell debris right there in the restaurant crowd along with cigarette-butts, Budweiser cans and a middle-aged stockbroker she used to call Sonny. Old ladies can dance a joyful dance. I know. In her 68th year Rachel danced-- holding on to the doorknob for balance-- who needs men? Music from the kitchen counter radio and grandchildren singing along, patting out the beat. Making cutlery and cereal bowls rattle in rhythm on the oak table. I saw Laura order three workmen to rip off the back porch they'd spent three sweaty hours constructing. Haven't done it right--damned fools--she fumed. Her will, iron hoop forged for 67 years, fastened like leg irons on men she hired for her jobs. She got her money's worth. Three survivors I have known, they all got out of this world alive. Who needs a mentor now? Mentor is another name for someone who shows the way, and I've had three in this getting-older game. Sixty looms ahead. Some say it's the decade they dread. Not me. Need a mentor? I've had three. |
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Karen Caterson
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On the Road to New Hope On the road to New Hope rolling down a Spring-clad hill We rounded a corner- fields danced on our left, a Victorian house on our right The sun reached down fiercely illuminating every blade of grass, every leaf linking Heaven and Earth One ray pierced my heart the curtain ripped the Holy of Holies laid bare I was seized mid-sentence (words lost-thought forgotten) catapulted out of the shroud of depression into somewhere beyond knowledge where I was embraced by the grace and beauty of connection, belonging, communion the awareness that Behind all pleasure and pain whether we are awake to it or not Connection IS |
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