First Place

goose down ghazal

a goose waves a wing at your passing car, air
hoisting the last whole piece of its body upwards. your air.

do broken bodies stagger us? or more often, release
a simple gasp; the tiniest ripple in the air.

when you arrive home, tire treads hold scraps of fur, remnants
of a tour de carnage, a floating feather caressing the air.

once, you asked your mother who buried bodies
of highway casualties. she told you they burned, ashes thick in dusty air.

watch for the smoke signal of their funerals--deep gray 
for a dashing deer; a skunk, gentle jade. clouds come to recover white air.

imagine being combined with other creatures at your death,
legs of a mountain lion and wings of a goose soaring midair.

no longer em, no longer roadkill, but something more
than either; a chimera made from fire and air.
—Emily D. 
 

Second Place

I was going to be an artist, then an actress, then a veterinarian, or a teacher, or a historian, or a playwright, or a singer—maybe a ballet dancer who also runs a restaurant?—and then later president, or Secretary of State, or the Greatest American Novelist, or maybe the best lawyer in the world—scratch that, actually: I’d rather be an interior designer, an executive chef, a marine biologist, a mortuary scientist—and I could also make movies on the side, teach college, raise five kids, raise no kids, have three cats, have a giant aquarium, live in the city, live in a van—and while I’m at it, I wondered why couldn’t I be a mathematician? Why couldn’t I be a doctor? I was going to save the world as an activist, an engineer, a diplomat, a businesswoman. I loved imagining the different versions of what life could be so much, I had no choice but to become me: to be a writer.

—Meredith P. 
 

Third Place

Death,

Will you make the journey soft?
When my hands go still and eyes cease to see
Will you carry me, childlike, through fields of clover
Will you allow a warm breeze
Of honeysuckle and the laughter of everyone I've ever loved
To serenade my spirit as it departs,
The sound of those saying "goodbye" and those saying "we're together again"
Coming together in a chorus of love and grief - so often, one and the same
Will the grass and roots and soil that I always tried to tend with care
Wrap themselves, lovingly, around my bones,
Cradling what they nourished so well
When you come to take me to the world you know,
A world I know so little of, but where my heart exists already, taken by those who have gone before
Will you let me leave as I have lived
With a quiet moment for the bumblebees and spiders whom I no longer fear,
A simple wish of safety for the rabbits and stray cats,
A song to sing beside the towering trees as the wind and rains shake their leaves,
With a final moment of love for the gift
Of sharing this life with those who live it beside me?

—Nora O.
 

My tongue tastes like the recipes of mis abuelas
Twisting, moving, shifting and changing
Strong and fluid; old and evolving
Sounds escape in two languages always in code
I don’t need to explain how I fit, I just do
My skin is the collection of sand
Every grain is a different shade of my ancestors
That’s just how it is
No te puedo explicar
My nose can sniff a powerful liar and a mean cook
My eyes catch the weights on shoulders
And tired feet and hands of my sisters
My heart is threaded in the infinite
Fishing wire of pain never off the hook
We are threaded and woven there
With our circular traumas spinning wildly
Sometimes our new threads are healthier, stronger
Así es, si no lo entiendes, así es
We are collected and evaluated
“This one is defective, it doesn’t fit the others, throw them out” they say
In my stomach is the roiling anger, spitting volcanoes
—Sapphire W.
 

later
We said later, as if time were a promise we could keep,
as if the world would wait patiently for us to become better.
We said later to the stars we used to sing to
later to the rivers running thinner each year,
later to the trees loosening their reach to the sky,
later to the quiet that gathered where birds used to be.
We lived our lives in small, ordinary mercies
cooking dinner or holding the ones we love
saying later as we struggle to survive in the world we built
And still the seasons changed, not suddenly but softly,
until summer would not leave us
and the air itself felt tired of holding us up
We said there is still time, until we ran out of laters
And then came the after, not with fire or storms, but with an absence.
the house still stands,
the chair always remembers,
the wall separates nothing
will the wind still whistle with nobody to dance to it?
—Morgan W.

Nothing is Ever Wasted
Sometimes on sumptuous sunny Sunday afternoons
I lie lazily on a cotton blanket near the pond on my sister's property
I gaze up at the potpourri of magnificent trees
Towering pines, sugar maples, white oaks, tulip & beech

Over at the bird feeders, the tiny hummingbirds,
Red-coated cardinals, finches & sparrows
Are having a festive seed party
A bright orange Monarch butterfy frequently floats fleetingly by
It is a dreamy wistful time for me
Of creamy clouds, sky, dandelions, grass & God

Sometimes The Uninvited Demons of Thought
Invade the space, as they are wont to do,
And scream at me that I am wasting my life!!!
I listen, laughingly and lovingly, because they, too, like everyone else,
Just want to be heard...I wait them out and promise to try harder
Eventually they move on to greener pastures

That's when the still small singing winging bell-ringing voices
Of angels, fairies, nymphs & sylphs
Joyously assure me that nothing is ever wasted
In Love's Universe
—Casey