Winners Circle

Please join us in celebrating our 2023 contest winners. We are honored to share their poetry and their stories.

SUBMIT YOUR WORK

Winners Circle

Please join us in celebrating our 2022 contest winners. We are honored to share their poetry and their stories.

SUBMIT YOUR WORK

POETRY

OUR 2023 WINNERS

First Place

This Is Not America

By Raya Yarbrough

READ THIS IS NOT AMERICA

Second Place

Sahara

By Cassie Lipton

READ SAHARA

Third Place

Elemental

By Jenna Martinez

READ Elemental

WINNERS

About Raya, Cassie, & Jenna

first place winner

Raya Yarbrough

Raya Yarbrough is a writer and singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles, California. Raya has written and produced three albums of eclectic music, most recently Artifacts of Grace (2020), which is based on a series of paintings and sculptures by artist Pam Douglas that explores the way female-bodied experiences intersect with larger issues of justice and equality. In addition to songs, Raya is a playwright, writes poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction about being a parent in a multiracial family, while also being a working artist. Her voice and original music have been featured in many TV series, including Battlestar Galactica, and Outlander. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children and is finishing a humorous memoir about her daughter’s first five years.

rayayarbrough.com

I don’t know the answer, but I can feel it. That emotional truth is the engine behind all my writing.

second place winner

Cassie Lipton

I’m a Charlottesville-based poet currently in my 4th year at the University of Virginia, where I am a double major in Music Performance and Global Sustainability. I started writing at a young age (including handwriting 100 pages of a novel in the fifth grade) but didn’t start writing poetry until college. My first year at UVA, I joined the Washington Literary Society and Debating Union (which I am currently Vice President of) and found an ever-present platform to explore my writing and share it with others. Indeed, I read Sahara to this group within a week of writing it, and this organization has pushed and inspired me to be the writer I am today. I hope to be a lifelong writer, as this is how I make sense of the world.

Poetry, to me, is the most freeing form of writing. It doesn’t always have to make sense; it doesn’t always have to be “right.” Writing poetry is like the feeling I get after climbing a mountain on a crisp fall day: I stand at the peak, I see the world stretched out before me, and it is beautiful.

third place winner

Jenna Martinez

Jenna Martinez (she/her) is a queer, Mexican-American writer and printmaker. Her writing has appeared in Homology Lit and Femme, Collectively Zine 0.1. Jenna is a recipient of the Support for Artists grant from the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center funded by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and Literary Cleveland’s 2023-2034 Breakthrough Writing Residency. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, she now lives in Cleveland, Ohio. She is at work on a collection of poems exploring the aliveness of place and how place mixes with her ancestry, her queerness, and her elemental makeup.

I once heard Sandra Cisneros speak, and she said, “Write the stories that only you can tell.” This poem is born from that telling.

POETRY

OUR 2023 Honorable Mentions

Rock, Paper, Scissors

By Mridvi Khetan

READ Rock, Paper, Scissors

Paper Cuts

by Maria Oglesby

READ Paper Cuts

The World Could Be Beautiful

by Dylan Lyons

READ The World Could Be Beautiful

After 9/11

by Joan Roger

READ After 9/11

POETRY

OUR 2022 WINNERS

First Place

Raining Red

By Mridvi Khetan

READ Raining Red

Second Place

In The Tide

By Emily BALCHUNAS

READ In The Tide

Third Place

Do You Remember?

By Robert Watt

READ DO YOU REMEMBER?

This Is Not America by Raya Yarbrough

This is not America,
this is twisted wood in sand.
This is 10 million years
in this stone, in my hand.
This is the dirt beneath the factory.

Dirt beneath the church.
Dirt which holds, refractory
to governmental girth.
We drive and we stride
and we fall and we ride
without thought,
on the crumbled blood of mountains.

But this is not America,
these are fathoms and tides.
These are homes of loons and otters
only human hands divide.
This is the hiss of reeds
a sea above a sea,
an old spiritual, moaning,
in the language of the Hickory.
From ancient river spines
boils brine from the fault,
and we have forgotten ourselves,
as the children of salt.

But this is not America,
this is 5:09 pm
and the cobweb in the window
has caught fire again
in the lift of summer’s nothings,
spectral breaths which lift the weave
to breathe through phantom tendons
on the edge of this eve.

Now the wind chimes, now a shadow
following the ring,
none of these have ever been at war
with anything.
I call to this land
by the name given to it
by the Bear and the Orca,
by the fox and the crow.
The name we can hold in our hands
in the driftwood
but we can never know.

Sahara by Cassie Lipton

One day, my body
will not remember it’s anger
the way the Sahara
does not remember
it was once ocean.

One day, the seasickness
will become less violent,
the waves less treacherous,
as drop by drop you drain
from the space I’ve left open.

One day, I will step out
and the water will be ankle-deep.
Your memory is sea salt
on my face and in my hair
but drawing is no danger

One day, I will lay on the damp
sand, soft and pliable
and build castles of everything
I have become without you,
when I’ve washed away my anger.

And in a thousand years,
I will lie on the dunes
and feel the dry heat on my back
and it will be
as if you were
nothing.

Elemental by Jenna Martinez

Aire
at eighteen, my mother runs away
to the border to marry my father.
the air that carries her to Laredo
seeps into the seeds of me.
I bloom into a small tornado.
breezes ferry me into soft beds and soft bodies.
in Mexico, a woman holds my palm
eres inquieta, she says.
I turn 33 in Death Valley.
the wind strikes the sand
into wisps the shape of snakes.

Fuego
the heat of Brooklyn
evaporates up the summer concrete
holding the steps of all of us
tumbling through the city.
I have a husband, a girlfriend, and a lover.
I am a giant.
I press my heavy foot onto the street
stepping over the bridges
that touch borough to borough.
unfurled, I expand across the city,
come to its borders and spill.

Agua
on the southside of San Antonio,
the curandera spins a bath for sweetness.
the petals fall onto the shower ﬂoor.
I toe the constellations at my feet.
bathed in honey,
I loosen the laces, untie myself
from my life, my marriage,
my pebble of earth.
I slip into dark waters.

Tierra
a small compass emerges in my belly.
I follow the arc of sun.
its origin touches the bedroom windows,
bowing in the living room.
I press blooms in to the clay Midwest earth,
their maroon faces stretch over the lawn
vining toward sun.

Rock, Paper, Scissors by Mridvi Khetan

Sometimes it’s all a child’s play
Rock
Paper
Scissors
Play it as you may
Her index and middle fingers casually separate to create a fissure,
a lens to see the landscape hidden below her flesh
The scissor-like fingers a part of the overpowering body

A body is nothing but a rock on this earth
Defeating every thing, every finger, every scissor

Until
the paper comes
A paper, the renewed life of nature
with the several inscriptions of men
has the fuel to render every rock useless
Because a body cowers behind papers
The red tape is the dictator
What am I, if not for a paper telling me I’m a citizen?
What am I, if not for a paper to show I’m educated?
What am I, if not for a paper to flaunt for my status?
A body is nothing without its papers
A rock is always defeated by paper
The mountains can vouch for it too
Those hefty structures always losing the game to the clouds

The mountains - a body - perpetually a rock
The clouds - a shapeshifter - mostly a paper enshrouding the peaks
There you have it, the rock defeated again

There is only one way to defeat the paper -
to stretch apart those fingers
Only when the scissors detach from the rock,
the fingers depart from the body
Can the scissors defeat the paper
Only when the talent detaches from the being,
when the art departs from the artist, from the red-taped helpless humans
Can it actually cut through the suffocating boundaries of the paper

So what’s your move?
Rock, Paper or Scissors?

Paper Cuts by Maria Oglesby

Depression hits everyone different

For some, it’s a gut punch
I have a friend who is shattered by it. Every year when ice coats the ground and the heater goes
tck tck tck she lies fragile as frost, unable to get out of bed without breaking.

For me, it’s a paper cut.

You can go to work with a paper cut.

Sometimes, when you hold it closed, you can’t even remember you have one.

You don’t need to see a doctor for a paper cut

You can wrap it up

And usually, that helps.

But sometimes, there are too many to wrap.

When life sours, the lemon-juice sting of anxiety opens all the old ones up with a pang I can’t ignore.

I wonder sometimes

Would you have to see a doctor if you had a thousand paper cuts?

What about 50?

What about five?

A cut for each friend left behind (a drop in a well I float above

A cut for the frantic background buzz of desperation

A cut for failure, each road in life a detour over a path uncrossed

A cut for the guilt that gnaws at my gut for each time my hungry temper bites

A cut for the children I might never be able to have

Where do you draw the line?

When does a paper cut become a wound

The World Could Be Beautiful by Dylan Lyons

The world could be beautiful,
but we let greed reign.
The rich rig the system
for their own gain.
Kids without food,
families without homes.
The growing debt smothers,
but we’re all on our own.

The world could be beautiful,
but we let guns rule.
The fear lurks around us,
on the streets and at school.
Parents lose children,
children lose friends.
Is that the price of “freedom,”
these violent ends?

The world could be beautiful,
but we let hate thrive.
Anyone who’s different
must fight to survive.
Racism runs deep,
down to the soil,
but the structures of power
feed off the turmoil.

The world could be beautiful,
but we’re letting it burn.
Nature’s decaying
as the earth turns.
We live for consumption,
for oil and gas,
so the storms just grow stronger
and take longer to pass.

The world could be beautiful,
if we switch up the play.
We could rewrite the rules
and demand a new day.
Replace hate with compassion
and swap greed for giving.
In a world this beautiful,
we’d truly be living.

After 9/11 by Joan Roger

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…” William Shakespeare

The digging went on for weeks, for months.
Tomorrow came and we grieved and raged
through that long winter. Our bodies became hungry,
so we ate toast and drank coffee; we showered
and washed our hair; we put on clean shirts,
slacks, shoes; we bought groceries, we slept,
we went to work, cold, tired, unmoored.
Wounds stopped weeping and scars formed.
And every day, babies were born. Children
went to school and played in the snow.
Mail was delivered and bills paid.
A day came when laugher was heard again,
and music. Lovers embraced in the night.
And even now, over twenty years later,
I don’t understand what any of it signifies—
the something of this day
turning to the next—
but when I think of the firefighters
who climbed those burning buildings,
when I remember the people who opened their doors
to shelter strangers and the rescuers who risked their lives
sifting through the smoking debris,
then I know that despite the slow stride
of the body, despite the darkness, the grave,
despite all that threatens and pulls us apart,
there’s something decent within us
that lives.

Raining Red by Mridvi Khetan

I grew up believing that the rain is red.

Red like the scars mapped across my body,
gifted by a man who colour red embodied
Hot stew for all meals resembled the red sandstone,
which brother went to mine from blood-marked zones
Every day we took a bath in red water,
sourced from a brick well
Everywhere we were blocked by red tape,
sourced from bureaucratic cells

You see, red is omnipresent
It’s the colour of resistance but also the colour of our blood
Does this mean we’re born to resist?
I resisted red
but how can you, if all you see are corpses - dead.
A memory surfaces in my head,
how my sister was shamed monthly for her red

I can smell it too, you know
The red, a scent of my morning breath
Remnants of the wars fought by words I can only dare to speak in stealth
If red is the paint I’ve been coloured in, body and bone
It’s only logical to see my surroundings in the same tone
So when it rained the other day
I said,
“Ma, see it’s raining red today!”

In The Tide by Emily Balchunas

He dragged himself out of bed
as the sun began to rise.
The seagulls were his alarm,
he rubbed the dreams from his eyes.
This lighthouse has seen some storms,
she sways in the night.
The wind whistles through her creaks,
but never seems to get inside.
Coffee soaked the air,
the windows let in the sunshine.
The ocean brings a breeze that shifts the house
from time to time.

The lighthouse was clean and knew his routine,
this presence of a man.
Her eggshell walls shined a bit brighter,
her lamp had a certain glisten.
She even seemed to stand a bit taller
as he occupied her land,
and with every rope he knotted
the wind would lift his hand.

The keeper of this structure was patient,
and he cared.
In the morning he’d sing to her
and at night he’d climb her stairs.
Clicking on her burning light
like brushing back her hair.
With a hot cup of tea
she thought they both would share.

Fall came and went,
every winter, time would freeze.
Every night he’d shine her light
for any ships lost at sea.
As the days would pass them by,
their nights together began to cease.
No matter how tall she stood,
she couldn’t bring him peace.

One day, the morning breeze came in
And the sun began to rise.
There were no coffee smells,
or sleepy groggy eyes.
Gone without a trace,
like he was taken in the night.
The lighthouse stood empty and still,
with his memory held inside.

Dare I to say to this very day
as the sun is sure to rise,
her eggshell halls and walls will wait
to dance with him again in the tide.

Do You Remember? by Robert Watt

Do you remember the Christmas ball?
Your hair worn up above its wispy strands
And swinging jewels that kissed the neck
Cool and scented with the musk of foreign lands
You rose from a dress the colour of your lips
Plunged a neckline that drew the hungry eye
Onto the eggshell curves and the teasing split
long though never quite revealed the thigh

Do you remember Trafalgar square?
Rushing to the front, running with the madding crowd,
High on passions that quickly gave to laughs or tears,
A rebel stance and voice exuberant and loud
You were strong and lithe, danced into the night,
Filled with beans for a life come recently mature.
We lit candles at both ends and did it all,
Having time and energy to spare for more.

Do you remember Fridays after work
and weekend afternoons lost in sin?
We’d toss our clothes, fall carefree in a fumbling yearn,
Hands buried in hair and greedy for a touch of skin.
We did it all together, hardly left a day apart,
With nothing but ourselves for warmth but happily,
Scraping pennies for bills and budget meals,
Slowly making house then family.

Do you remember how we got so old?
Our faces fell and hair tuned thin and grey.
Focus shifted nearer, the youthful fires cooled,
While the world unnoticed moved away.
We slowed, quietened by relentless years,
Congealed into the people we portrayed;
Staid companions, content with holding hands
Creaking and groaning into life’s denoting fade