Winning Portrait Poems FA22

Thank you so much to everyone who entered our annual poetry contest. This year Dana Yost judged the landscape category, and Lee Ann Roripaugh judged the portrait category. Please enjoy this year’s winning poems :)

First Place

FORBEARANCEBy Cameron BrooksWind—unlike the likely droughtsand stubbled summer lawn,or the cicadas’ tymbal cry;unlike the absolute emptinessof fields under snow at nightwith their highways like blue stitches;unlike the austere Cooper’s hawksperched upon fence postsand splintered billboards—windwas the one thing she refusedto abide: how it lashes the prairie,the porch swing, the sky, penetratingthe slightest cracks of herworn house, her worn face.

Second Place

TIMBERBy Marcella RemundWe dominoed four Ponderosas down the westslope of Inktop just before the sky broke open,hard rain like icy knife blades. Darrin boughtme coffee and a grilled cheese at Everett’s towait it out. Then the hail, deluge of golf ballspock-marking my pickup again, stripping paint.I wait for a break, jump the back stairs bytwo’s and three’s, up to my place. Clinkingdishes and Jack yelling in the café belowblend with driving rain in an off-key bellchoir. Inside, Zombie snakes and curlsaround my leg, her hoarse meow and flickingtail my signal to dump the last of the tunaon a chipped saucer. Rain tomorrowwill mean white bread soaked in milkthis week. I turn on the TV, then fall onthe bed still soaked and shedding sawdust.Zombie curls twice in my armpit, snoresor wheezes, I can’t tell which. In half-sleep,I hear my father’s voice, You’re Hill Citytrash, boy. You’ll never go anywhere.Though it’s only a memory, it’s louderthan his calls I stopped taking, louderthan my mother begging in her letters. Louderthan a felled pine breaking over a boulder.Watch me, I answer out loud. You just watch.When this rain lets up, you watch me climb.

Third Place

Liturgy of the Hours By Ruth HarperDuring the pandemic, I had discipline.Fearful of unraveling mentally, physically,emotionally,I sought structure,following the order of the daylike a convent nun.Lauds marked first awareness of dawn.Prime meant the sacramentof morning coffee: rebirth, rededication.Terce became time for a Psalm, meditation,and a modest pilgrimage through the neighborhood.At Sext I broke bread—no holy wafer—toast with peanut butter and an apple.None was observed with deep breathing(that sometimes became sleep).Vespers placed the longed-for chaliceof wine into my hand.Compline brought reflection,recommitment to intentions.Matins, the hour of mystery:whose voice did I hearwhispering your prayers will save you?Freed from lockdown,I flounder.No need for strict routine,I drift. I sit too much. I ruminate.My rosary of blessingshas become a chain of worry beads.Though we are told the pandemic is over,I feel unsafe, uneasy, lied to.I know what to do.But now I resist, an unhappy postulantwary of routine.The hours still come and go.But I have wandered from the cloisterand no longer hearthe calls to prayer.