1st Annual Poetry Contest

Thank you to everyone who participated in our 1st annual poetry contest! The selected winning poems are published below, and you can reference the contest rules and parameters here.

Grand Prize Winner

Author: Ashley Hemenway

Gardens of Collingswood

I follow brown patches emerging from tufts of green,

and I sit.

Hundreds before me tread, 

I think of my blissful insignificance, and I sit.

Water is the glitter falling off a fairy’s wand.

A twig is my plow,

I center crumbs of sand to help ants build, and I sit.

After long enough, I know the birds’ lyrics,

I can sing along

I should swat at crawlers in the blades,

but I feel selected as they climb me, and I sit.

As much as here’s mine, it’s even more his.

I watch him fill his cheeks, pierce the trunk,

flick his tail, and I sit.

Some close their eyes, just breathe, their neighbor

scribbles out baby names as fast as she jots them down.

I look at her belly and I sit.

Lots of writers here, as one furiously beats

the keys of a four year thesis,

another glides her gel pen 

across the back of her binder,

“Matthew” with hearts, she darts her eyes 

assures her privacy, but I see and I sit.

Readers here too. The Good Book, The Big Book,

The Cat in the Hat, Applied Fluid Dynamics.

I read all of their faces, and I sit. 

My only third space anymore, I just come to be.

But he came here to send off his father,

to marry his love, to forgive himself. And I just sit.

The friction of each foot that’s faded a trail

into the green reminds me of my place in time, in space

The world was ok before me, it’ll be ok after

and how freeing? To know that all I have to do

is sit. 

Sit in the garden, sit in my feelings,

sit by the woman who is sitting alone,

sit with the village raising the young,

sit with the crawlers, flyers, climbers.

The wind wraps a womb around my wandering spirit

and tells me to sit.