2021 Annual Contest Landscape Category Winners

Congratulations to the winners of our annual poetry contest! Thank you to everyone who entered the contest. The following landscape poems were judged by Christine Stewart. She was so impressed with the submissions. Enjoy the winning poems :)

FIRST PLACEOde to the Ground CherryBy Amanda PotterI first saw you, physalis,hiding next to a stale suburban pondand its concrete retention riser.The tallgrass around you flattenedby schoolchildren and their bikes andtheir fishing poles and their food -remnants of potato chips and snack cakesat rest among the cattails.Your crepey shells abide, shelter precious seedsfrom careless feet. Dirt-learned fingers gathered gold berrieswhen the pond was just a quiet slough,your sweet-tart fed families, healed wounds.Native, ubiquitous, conqueror-called aggressive,cursed when you tangle in draper headsand stain the soybeans.You grow as you always have,no defiance or disrespect intendeddespite the benevolent language of massacre:Reduce water. Heavy hand with the Roundup.Burn it back. Get it early.You are celebrated when you remainwhere you’ve been transplanted,an existence marked by demure restraint.I could buy your organic seeds online,sell your fruit at $4 a pint at the farmer’s market.Meanwhile, you sprout in ditches,and quietly cause chaos among neat crop rows –preventing their progress to the highest goods:shiny, empty packages hardening hearts.Ground cherry, I want to be your ally,rebel against a system that values youonly when you stay in your place, provide profit.It’s an eccentric kind of subversion,gathering roadside fruit for propagation. Takemy garden, grow over the imported blooms.May you survive despite us. May you always remainthe untamable creature from the earth. May you riseagain and again and again.

SECOND PLACEHunting SeasonBy Erika SaundersWhen pheasant huntingit is advisable to leavea thermos full of espresso,shot through with Four Roses,in the cab of the truckfor luck. Shotgun bentlike herringbone on my shoulderI stare down enucleationfrom the Big Bluestem seedheads with each footfall.Switchgrass, Indian grass,Sideoats Grama all solid bird sheltersin the snow. Invasive species of grasscollapse under the weight of the wintersnow suffocating what’sbelow. Invasive like Canadathistle, wormwood sage, eventhese pheasants were invasiveonce, and then there is youand me.Climbing over fences and underthe dropping sun when the dogsflush a pheasant. I have no shot. You do,and the dogs work the scentpresenting a pheasant shot through.I warm fingertips against the trucksair vents, as the dogs in their kennelnestle together like a fine houndstoothand we sip at the coffee, grown strongerwith the day, as the truck barrels overthe gravel road flushing pheasantsfrom the ditches all the way home.

THIRD PLACEBlessed ZephyrBy Cameron BrooksSpirit, breath, windsurging in multitudesof ripe sunflowerslike electricitylifting blackbirdand raptor andthe damp coal noseof a buck.Laughter cracksthe face of the deeplake (tongue-inflated-cheek)and every laststalk, shuck, and kernelrattles like a holyplaything.Never inertbecause never desertedto that quietudetantamount tooblivion.

HONORABLE MENTIONAutumn AnalogBy Peter ColsonMonarchs cling to the honeysuckles like wind to the plains,they bob in concert with the gusts and the refrain of the hay sickle.A hunter hurries when a downpour catches him miles from home,stepping into a badger hole, the leg bone parts sudden as thunder.A combine pivots at the end of a cornfield, and pheasants flush,redtails spiral down, clear the dead and silence the indecisive.Rattlers shed under a night sky, and the skins whirl moonlit on a breeze,prairie dogs pause and ponder, the specters slithering among them.Waxwings sing drunk after eating the sun-steeped cranberries,they tumble from branches, and feral cats savor their own sweet time.An oak topples in the shelterbelt, and a young man chops hard,the blade ricochets and marries his lips with the taste of copper.A bison hesitates above the glazed shale surrounding a hot spring,skulls litter the bottom, their last breaths still bubbling to the surface.A snow flurry blinds a summer tanager migrating late,a falcon gawks at the easy note of red squeaking in its talons.An old man’s foot keeps time with sap tapping in white buckets,the beats slow by degrees, and the sugar spills out on the leaves.