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Kelly Athena Richards is a writer, artist, photographer, and musician who has
made her home in Arizona since 1986. She has overcome bouts with cancer and
IBS. She holds Master's degrees in music and photography.
Her recent book of 171 poems and zingers, My Dancing Heart, is available
at www.mydancingheart.com. SARK says," I LOVE this book!"
Her inspiration line with a recorded bit of hope is available 24 hours a day
at (480) 773-7000. Her free weekly e-newsletter is intended to spur the
reader's own creativity.
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Evening Therapy
by Kelly Athena Richards
We exchange sharp words
cactus thorns pricking each other as we often do
by jumping to conclusions
and not hearing each other through
You mumble youre sorry
step out to the porch,
closing the screen door slowly
Outside you hear the crickets chirp in loud chorus,
smell the new-cut grass you mowed just before sunset,
and see the waxing moon now filled half-way with light
Your garden that is so familiar to you
is hidden like a stranger under the blanket of night
but your eyes adjust
and you see something
glowing white as a ghost
bright as sunlight
flashing in the corner of your eye
Tiny glowing spheres adorn the branches
Night has opened the jasmine blossoms
They seem to dance in their white petal skirts
I think they have come out to flirt
with their twin-shaped souls, the stars,
that gaze down on them from not too far
Their thick, sweet perfume fills the air
Your heart blossoms open as they cast their spell
You pick a few and bring them to my room
where I lay bathing
to clear my head
before I slip under the covers
and retreat to bed
You lay them in the water where they float like constellations
swirling in a liquid sky
They kiss my toes (like you do sometimes)
They squeeze between those scorched red angry thoughts
that count up rights and wrongs
and whos ahead
Theyve no thorns like the rose, theyre simple and soft
They tease out my smile with their delicious scent
My tight places start to dissolve
In their presence I evolve to their innocent level
Your eyes catch mine
in a hopeful tentative gaze
I breathe you in and reach
for your sweet calloused hand,
touch the gold band I exchanged with you long ago,
turn it in place, prickly words erased from my mind
I dont need to be right in every conversation
Were not competitors but minglers of heart and soul
I squeeze your hand and feel the familiar curve of our love
encircling our hearts
drawing us back inside its safe edges
You hold out a big, soft towel
and wait for me
I step back into our sacred path
and leave the jasmine
floating in the bath
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SECOND PLACE WINNER
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Word's Weaver
by Oritsegbemi Jakpa
for John Ennis
Your words will outlast the forests,
succeeding generations yet to come,
will be read as long as words remain,
the tools of human communication.
You brew wisdom from umbilical chord
of tear-furrows, and root's familiar songs;
your truth, mirror to the light of the age,
gives what the mother gives the newborn.
You reel consciousness beyond secret moons,
knitting words and thoughts on stilts of light;
bars of space are dwarfed at your flight
reaching the abodes of dream's songs;
In the burnished spark of the hurricane,
raise soul-spewed-magma incarnates
from the desert and leaves of stone,
your verse, rival of glorious Milton,
--- storms beneath my bleeding skin
--- mammoth supernovas of exploding light
illuming the black night of the horizon
of my thought like bushfire in the harmattan.
My words, my own verse like ancient walls
crumble into mustard intervals of broken seeds.
Anoint me with the herb of such "Spiritus Mundi",
"oval encyclicals": anoint my hairs' root to my feet,
let me emerge like a corn after rain
from the rock bottom of undiscovered fields.
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THIRD PLACE WINNER
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I Remember Georgia
by Kate Weber
I remember Georgia
the happy chaos of a spring barbecue
spitting watermelon seeds in our church clothes
yes please, ma'am
I'd love some more peach pie
I remember Georgia
dropping our lines amongst the cat-tails
under the bright moon and cool autumn sky
hidden from Mama's watchful eye
stale cornbread as fish-food
I remember Georgia
long summer afternoons
helping Mama press her crisp crinolines
smelling the magnolia blossoms
on the heavy humid breeze
I remember Georgia
I remember
My soul never left
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