$2,500 GRAND PRIZE WINNER | ADULT DIVISION
The Bell Ringer’s Song
by Mark Flanigan
let it ring
the bell’s yoke made from American elm
mixed with tears from the trail and let it ring
blood-sweat from the blackbird’s migration
swept windward
from the ivory coast
fastened
by history and an inequitable liberty
let it ring lest we forget our bell does
sit in the shadow of a shared house
let it ring if flight brings with it responsibility
if blessing we wish to refrain from becoming curse
all the more reason to take wing
and let it ring
though the dancer’s lithe shoulders move under heavy cloak
though our lips are cracked as imperfectly as our bell no matter
the late start in an uneven race nor the obstructed view from the back
of the bus still we must let it ring unto all the inhabitants the world over
no matter who may or may not be listening
no matter how well fastened the
clapper be chained no matter how tired the hand that pulls the string let it ring
no matter how high the wall or cramped the hold no matter the distance from shore
to sea throw off the yoke of history shrug off the cloak of inequality and let it ring
until all the chains of injustice break free each of us born with song and thus we must sing
let it ring
let it ring
let it ring
$1,000 FIRST PRIZE WINNER | ADULT DIVISION
Finding Freedom
by Richard Hague
after visiting Gettysburg battlefields, September 2015
First, you must taste blood. This is inescapable, for freedom gets lost in the wildernesses
of women and men, in the wildernesses of greed, pride, power, fear.
So, you must taste blood, it is sad but true, for reason and peace and love do not prevail.
Then, you must eat the bitterness of losing your better self to war and disaster.
Even as you feed on this bitterness, you starve, but you must eat this bitterness and starve,
you must nearly perish of hunger for justice and liberty, you must slash and rip the flesh
of your enemy, you must smell the battlefield, after rain, with all the horses dead.
Then, you must forgive. Yourself, first, for you are the closest sinner to you,
and then you must reach out and forgive those who have sinned against you.
It is hard, it is a stern medicine, it is like cutting away
the rotten flesh of your own infected wound.
It is a gruesome business. It is pain, it is a burden on the soul.
But you must taste the blood, you must eat the bitterness,
you must somehow forgive the wickedness in yourself and your neighbor and
your country, and—impossible!—you must love.
Then, after a night of battlefield moans and wailing,
far off, over the fields of Gettysburg, as over the paddies of Khe San,
as over the beaches of Hastings and Gallipoli, the plains of Troy,
as over the streets of Watts and Ferguson,
in first light, you will see freedom crawl forward on all fours, itself almost broken,
but looking for you, freedom seeking you yourself in all your brokenness,
and it will demand that you lift it up, that you hold it (smell its blood, touch its tears)
so you will begin to heal.
$500 SECOND PRIZE WINNER | ADULT DIVISION
Self-portrait at 25
by Elese Daniel
I know a woman,
lovely in her bones,
bark bound in the epic ridges
of brown skin—folksongs
rung through the viscera—
beneath it church-like chords
overlap the subtle differences
of her sadness and fear. They
suspend themselves in hope.
Swing low, civil semantics: A chariot
awaits in the innocence of the winds,
low and open.
The face is what one goes by
generally; we explore the inner
workings of a masterpiece
only after we recognize the
repetition of its blinking eyelashes
or the score of a smile set
between cheeks.
I know a woman,
lovely in her bones—
their call and response
pragmatic in its jubilee.
$2,500 GRAND PRIZE WINNER | HIGH SCHOOL DIVISION
Is Freedom Just Not That into Me?
by Dana Schneider
When I first met Freedom, I was smitten.
Its panache hexed me:
It quoted Locke and Jefferson,
bought shots of patriotism for the whole bar,
dressed in rich reds and blues, reminiscent of a diagram of the veins
pumping bald-eagle-screeching-adrenaline into my naïve heart.
Years after that first encounter, the honeymoon phase ended.
Realizations that Freedom treated me differently than its
less female, more Christian, enormously wealthier friends demolished
the previously rock solid wall of dominant beliefs I inherited from those before me.
As I began to rebuild,
I resentfully adopted a new nickname for Freedom:
Privilege.
In retrospect, there were red flags in some of our earliest encounters:
Freedom used sexist pronouns and made weird jokes from its childhood about how
we only have had forty-three and three-fifths presidents;
in my own defense, my judgement was impaired in the moment by those free rounds.
Freedom is apathetic towards me, but I don’t take the unrequited love personally.
I have heard many stories of Freedom’s upbringing, and it sounds as though
its fathers were people pleasers, occasionally compromising at the expense of Freedom’s neglect.
That neglect wore holes in the pockets of Freedom’s memory,
which is why when I scrawl my digits on a receipt under the words “Call me!,”
I rarely hear back.
There’s enough space in that pocket for the contact information of all of humanitywe just need to sew the holes.
$1,000 FIRST PRIZE WINNER | HIGH SCHOOL DIVISION
A Snow Globe Sky
by Bridget Bill
We bury ourselves beneath a snow globe sky
With the ground a thrum of hummed hurricanes
Whispering rhythms that run through our hearts
And give us hope of life beyond the glass above
The glass that gathers dust
Like a stained smile, a graying dove
A wedding dress in the rain of shattered love
In the rain of dirty, speckled snow
Suspended in the false hope of melted dreams
Waiting for the rush of reality to break through the walls
Like torn seams
We wait like the snow to fall through the cracks
To fly because we can
Why, wouldn’t that be freedom!
For freedom is the sky we bury ourselves beneath
And to reach out—to touch it—would be a relief
$500 SECOND PRIZE WINNER | HIGH SCHOOL DIVISION
Are we there yet?
by Alison Maniace
Are we there yet?
The call comes from the backseat
An itch of impatience eroding
The complacency measured only
By the metronome of tires against highway
Subdivisions rip past the window
Springing forth from the same earth
Where patriots who once forged
Dreams across the virgin landscape
Now lie still within dusky paintings
Are we there yet?
Have we overcome?
Or does hatred divide us
Rendering our brotherhood a mirage
Lost in the foothills of utopia
A mother screams in the night
Her child limp from a stray bullet
And she cries, “Who can help me?”
But there is no answer…no witness except streetlamps
Which hover above her, indistinguishable from the stars
Are we there yet?
Let us continue the journey together
So we may hear the bell toll of freedom
From a moonlit Appalachian garden
To the gleaming citadels of our prosperity