ONLY poems listed here or in the current printed anthology are eligible for the 2017-2018 competition.
Because we did not have threads
of turquoise, silver, and gold,
we could not sew a sun nor sky....
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's ...
Below the gardens and the darkening pines
The living water sinks among the stones,
Sinking yet foaming till the snowy tones...
1
Is this writing mine
Whose name is this...
Like the horn you played in Catholic school
the city will open its mouth and cry
...
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath
An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,...
The thick-walled room’s cave-darkness,
cool in summer, soothes
by saying, This is the truth, not the taut...
The last time I saw Paul Castle
it was printed in gold on the wall
above the showers in the boys’...
In the middle of rolling grasslands, away from lights,
a moonless night untethers its wild polka-dots,
the formations we can name competing for attention...
If I speak for the dead, I must leave
this animal of my body,
...
What People are Saying
understood."
