Editor’s note: As a followup to the Poet’s Seat Poetry Contest winners featured last Saturday, here are the finalists in this year’s competition.
Waiting on you You promised me love
Not just for yesterday, but also for other days,
today, and tomorrow
To be there when I need you
An ear to my cries and a shoulder to lean on,
To be a friend forever.
You promised to watch me grow
To be my shield
To be my light
You promised to be the first I see before sunrise,
And last I see at sunset.
To be the one to cheer me during school games
The one to congratulate me on my good grades The one to walk me down the aisle
The one to outlive me,
And the one to put the whitest flower on my grave,
As I lie in the cracked ground.
You promised never to leave
And leaving you was my greatest fear.
And now I watch it come to reality.
Day and night I worry and think,
Whether you will come back home.
My heart never beats like one at peace.
I try to fight my bad thoughts, acting like all is okay,
But that is wrong.
I am tired of dreaming about the perfect life with you beside me.
I am tired of wishing on the shooting star that I could have you back.
Everything in my life is destroyed.
My dreams and goals are burning and turning into ashes.
My faith is fading away.
Nothing ever goes right.
Even the shooting star has failed me,
All I asked was to have you forever
_By my side
_like a shadow
But now you’re gone
And they all say you will never come back
I look at the mirror and see myself broken,
My life, my dreams and my future all gone
For it all depended on you.
You were the light to my darkness
My heartbeat.
Sometimes I wish to say that you are just lost,
That one day in life you will be found.
Sometimes I pretend I never knew you just to ease the pain,
But I can’t.
The pains and sorrows are too heavy to bear.
It’s been years, but I still feel like it was yesterday.
I see you in my eyes,
I feel you in every place and every step.
Wish it was easy to let go,
But it’s not.
They say time heals all wounds,
But I don’t think it works with me.
I know you love me,
I know you care,
When you are ready to come home
The key is under the mat.
N
o
n
e
e
d
t
o
k
n
o
c
k
Hope to see you soon
I love you.
—Chenziz Opiyo
Youth Finalist
12-14-year-olds
“Write About It” I try to make a band of feminists to fight for our opinions,
But most are too scared to fight for something we’ve been banned from having.
In some countries we have to sell our bodies for income,
And in others we could end up in a cell.
In the past we were sent and sold to rapists and abusers and assaulters,
And now with the “equality” we have, we still senselessly make cent’s less.
The more we do the more we make up for,
The more they assign the more is due.
We stress and we stretch ourselves thin,
For dogs who can’t even figure out how to work cogs in a clock.
They’re filling our world with smog,
They’re smashing and crashing our planet,
They’re lashing our women.
We’re breaking into pieces just to keep the peace they’ve put on our shoulders.
The bark on our trees is dying,
So we bark and we scream and we yell but no one listens.
We’ve been stuck in a pen for so long,
So I thought I’d pick up a pen,
And write about it.
—Abby Ray
Youth Finalist
12-14-year-olds
“The Wind” If you listen closely you can hear the wind whisper.
Don’t believe me?
To hear her you must be a good listener.
It carries all of the secrets of the world
Every happy and sad moment.
If you listen you could hear the truth unfurl.
As intriguing as it seems.
Listen too closely
And it may ruin your dreams.
So next time you feel a breeze pass through,
Stop and listen.
For you may hear the wind’s secrets whispered to you.
—Jacobia Tyminsky
Youth Finalist, 12-14-year-olds
Malinois I met some boys once
who knew they wanted to go to war.
Tuesday afternoon, they drank and shook
with their own laugher, exploding
unafraid. They did not create
themselves — maybe I believed it
when I saw that dog lunge
like it knew what it wanted
like instinct and teeth,
toward those kids
walking backpacks home from school.
Yes, I wondered what it would be like
to be made a killer,
to be made of anything
other than the leaves
and that midnight parking lot
where I was too afraid
to kiss you.
—Wyatt Browne
Youth finalist, 15-18-year-olds
Taking Control You took my vibrant blues, greens and oranges
And I watched them fade
Like the black box dye running down my sink
at 2 am
But as I untangled myself from your barb wire grip
I realized
I was holding the paint set to my own life
So I mixed
And poured
Gallons of paints and colors
Across so many canvases until I created the masterpiece I now know as my soul.
I did.
I put back the colors that you stole from me
With new shades of
Violet
Red
Magenta
—Sabrina Marie Cote
Youth Finalist, 15-18-year-olds
Eyes Closed and Shoulders Curved She’s smart and tortured and talented and confused
I loved her looking the other way
I loved her laughing
As I loved her crying
She loves me lonely
She loves me with cautious recklessness
I love her in passionate clumsiness
I love her when she doesn’t want me to and I love her when she does
She loves me when she can
It’s enough
We watch the world peek into my bedroom
I pray she doesn’t pull away
My pleas fall thin and short
But I know my love will linger once the world walks away with her
Because for what it’s worth
I loved her with my eyes closed and shoulders curved when no one was watching
—Sadie Ross
Youth finalist, 15-18-year-olds
Who’s a Good Boy? Dogs.
Prized for their loyalty,
some so famous for this trait,
like Hachiko
a Golden Brown Akita
who waited patiently
every day
at a Japanese train station
to greet his owner,
returning from work,
for nine years,
nine months,
and fifteen days
after his owner’s death,
until he died himself
on March 8, 1935,
that even now,
86 years later,
there’s a statue at the station
to commemorate him.
No one thought to place Hachiko
on medication,
or suggest to him
that he move on,
or at least
consider a new owner.
No one recommended
therapy,
or getting out more,
or volunteer work,
or told him that his dead owner
would want him to be happy.
No.
Hachiko was admired
for his loyalty.
Woof.
—G. Greene
Twenty-eight Mama, she said
I’m standing on the threshold!
Indeed, with one plunge,
Propelled into channels
Of the wide world
A navigation breathtaking
in its boldness,
No one ever so sure
Where she wanted to go
How she wanted to go.
As she began, so she
Continued: silver-tongued,
Iron-willed, the opposite
Of mercurial. Was it luck,
Was it common sense, the early voice
whispering, “Get out of the way”?
—Tamara Grogan
Adult Finalist
After Chemo Early fall, making applesauce for winter.
Her head bald, smooth like the apples
she’s paring — Winesap, the vintage
variety — from the gnarled old tree out back.
Too weary to stand for long, she rests
against a stool. Cutting the fleshy fruit
into chunks keeps her mind off her body.
At the stove, stirring as pulp softens
to puree, she adds cinnamon. Grateful
for mindless tasks like filling mason jars.
Thankful too that her partner will lift
their weight in and out of the canner.
Pleased when they place a dozen
steaming quarts to cool on the counter.
She can already picture a day in December —
hearing the distinctive pop of a vacuum seal,
tasting the sweetness that will pass her lips.
—F. D. Kindness
Adult finalist
Remnants Two soup spoons. Not silver.
And our letters to each other,
nestled in a dark blue bandana
in an upstairs dresser.
Leave the twin utensils
in their assigned drawer.
Someone, someday, will touch
them and not know what they held.
Decide, when winter comes,
or in early spring when I burn brush,
if I should ignite those relics of paper.
Someone, someday, might notice
a burn spot in the field,
charred paper ash too small
to read the love once written there.
Crumbling. The fire quite out.
—Barbara Lemoine
Adult finalist
LAST RUN - for Ben Dad appears in boots and gloves
with spigots, buckets, bits and drills.
Is the wood pile holding out?
Collect enough, collect it still.
Catch it, hold it, bring it, pour it-
daily watch as winter parts.
Sip it, strain it, boil it, dip it –
a maple gift so sweet in March.
Will it get too warm too soon?
Feed the stove and fill the pan.
Bring the sap in, keep it cool.
Lift the bucket if you can.
Catch it, hold it, bring it, pour it-
daily watch as winter parts.
Sip it, strain it, boil it, dip it –
a maple gift so sweet in March.
How long before the maples move?
Will the robins never leave?
Drill bits lost and spigots gone.
Do southern trees provide a yield?
Catch it, hold it, bring it, pour it-
our maple harvest shrinks, declines.
Sip it, strain it, boil it, dip it –
no winter left, no taps, no pan.
No gloves, no boots, no wood supply.
March and maple soon will prove
no longer brothers in the spring.
Winter’s lock is on the move.
—Louise Minks, June 2016
MAY WOODS — for Leah Let’s take a picnic, shall we?
Come join me, hold my hand.
I’ll bring a blanket and a treat
where memories of August stand.
But woods are brown and gray, not green.
The stream too cold, the sun too thin.
I thought in May the woods were warm,
but I was fooled. They pulled us in.
All right, we’ll bring the picnic home.
In our yard, the sun stays near.
The wind lies down and May invites
our summer hearts to reappear.
—Louise Minks, June 2016
Caste, circa 1950 I was a white girl in Ohio. Aunt Jemima was on the pancake mix box, and we believed we were a happy family. In school we read about Dick and Jane. Jane helped Mother. Dick helped Dad. Spot was their dog, and the policeman at the corner was always friendly. The only trouble was, in my house, Dad yelled a lot except when he was asleep on the couch, a smelly glass of Scotch on the table beside him. One day Mom locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out. We sat on the stairs and could hear her crying. No one knew what to do, so we held our breath. On the nights when we didn’t finish our dinner we were told about the Chinese children on the other side of the world who had no dinner at all. We tried hard to imagine them. When a real Chinese family put an offer on a house on our block all the neighbors had a meeting. The family never moved in. The only black person I knew came once a week to iron in the basement. I wish I could remember her name. Years later I learned that in Georgia there were drinking fountains for whites and drinking fountains for coloreds. I was a white girl in Ohio. Aunt Jemima was on the pancake mix box, and I didn’t yet know about the lynchings.
—Anne Yeomans
Adult finalist