Another round of our annual Literary LEO competition is in the books, and we’re once again blown away by all of the talent that floats through our community. We selected a 1st through 3rd place for each category — short fiction, poetry, color photography, black & white photography and cartoons — and various honorable mentions throughout, but it wasn’t easy.

This year’s poetry submissions were broad and spanned the heartbroken to hearts-on-fire. There was love, rage and political indignation. The winning pieces exhibited skill in construction and content, and in many ways spoke directly to the times we live in and the quiet lives behind closed doors. It is encouraging that year after year poets of all levels submit to Literary LEO and each year it seems tougher and tougher to pick a winner when all creations of art are valuable. Even if your poem is not here in this small space that we’re given to share, keep submitting and keep writing.

Anyway, here are the poetry winners. We hope you enjoy.

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Poetry: First Place 

God’s Hair

By William Tucker

In the beginning, God had a mullet. He tricked all the other gods by being business in the front and party in the back 

end of the universe where the earth was a blue crystal ball hanging from his rearview mirror. 

The other gods bored him with their bluster and brimstone, so he hightailed it out of there, to a corner all his own. 

He sat alone in the void by the glow of the dashboard light and decided to people a world so he’d feel less alone. 

After planting trees and molding clay one day He decided He needed a trim.

He grabbed scissors from the glove box and cut and shaped until He had a beautiful pompadour. He used some grease from the engine to slick it back. 

And so He became an ad man, trying to sell mankind on His brand. 

But after the 

fall 

it was time for a change. 

The slicked up style man had turned to mange. 

So He went for a crew cut, just as His son was born. 

Easy to care for, a warrior God That struck fear in the hearts of men. Tapered just so to make His truth even harder to take.

And when He tired of listening to prayers and pleas, He could be found out in the garage, drinking beer and working on his ‘57 Chevy. 

A candy apple red beauty that Jesus never drove. 

33 years on, His son alone on earth crying 

Dad, get me down from this thing, 

Just as God looked in the mirror and saw that His hair had fallen into a combover. The perfect salt and pepper wave to hide His age. 

Here His son was dying, and He couldn’t help but think of all the changes that had come since that mullet long ago. 

As ages passed, He kept pulling out his hair, from all the dumb things we did on earth, how it seemed we didn’t care for heavenly things.

We were all too busy to notice God in the corner, bald and fuming, our smug self-importance hiding the glare from His head.

Mr. Clean revving the engine of that favorite Chevy 

aimed straight at the earth, 

Ready to wipe out his biggest mistake.

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Poetry: Third Place

“Orthopraxic Hymn”

By Jordan Hancock  

Where is God’s place in this millennium? Is He still in the sky looking down On the chaos He’s created, Or is He in each one of us?

I hear a confident voice speaking now, Projecting all the way to the back pew. I‘m fairly certain it’s all in my head, But I could recount its words to you.

If I wrote you out a Bible, Would you label it as heresy? Would you still believe in God If He chose to speak through me?

I sell the keys that unseal padlocks, My mama raised me as a prophet. I’m standing high upon a soapbox, And I refuse to come down off it.

I’m preaching from a pulpit, There’s really not a difference, Screaming orthodoxy’s bullshit; Goodwill’s our deliverance.

Can you dig it, Can you dig it?

Practice is the spade That runs up our digits, Buys back our souls,

Returns us our receipts, Frees us from our chains, And buries our beliefs;

Can you dig it, Can you dig it, All the way to Heaven?

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Poetry: Honorable Mention

On Executive Dysfunction

By Kat Gillespie

I.

I call this making a dent: two boxes from the pile drift down the steps into the recycling bin for once 

there is something of comfort in a pathological fear

when someone asks worst that could happen you already know

and will know again as cardboard piles the corner 

in sly mocking tumble lean and shift, I’ve imagined every day something worse beneath it lurking grimy teeth clenched in crescent smile 

and I hope I’ll rot before it’s gone 

I hope I fall and find my bones made of cardboard 

buckling 

 II. 

Suds cresting to bubble before drying in cracks between the tile the baseboards and dips in static coursing through my brain 

in my skull on my shoulders on my body in the corner of the bathroom sinking and watching the soap become thick and tacky right in front of me but even though this rag is in my hand believe me I swear I’m somewhere else and nothing can be done today

tell me how to scrub a floor like this one grimy under everything I’ve dropped collapsed under the weight of so just let me know which youtube hack best scrapes free these lingering memories 

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Poetry: Honorable Mention

Our Delusional March

By Kylee Hoelscher 

We trudged thirty-nine point three miles, a blister-footed, sometimes-bewildering march and all the while your hitchhiker was settling in, you the ungrateful host.

We slurped strawberry yogurt from Yoplait lids, each one adding a meager coin to the pot, our miser’s purse strings stretched too thin from research into flaccid penises and wrinkled jowls.

I read aloud that steamy bestseller while the healing poison dribbled down the tube into the arms of you and the others: the proud, the few, the sunken-breasted champions of the cause. 

We cut our hair in solidarity, but you alone chopped off your chest, the pillowy swells we’d longed for at thirteen that had given pleasure along with sustenance, now resembling a marked treasure map.

We smoked weed in your living room, absolved from fear of prying mothers’ eyes; placed bets on the timeline of a cure if men lopped off cocks at the rate of one in four. 

You had courage and grace, they said in those final morphine-filled days, those moronic, meaning-finding, hangers on whom we couldn’t shed in the end. 

Yesterday I sat with your girls and wondered what legacy you had left them, your film noir smile and Jennifer Aniston hair or your one fatal flaw.

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Poetry: Honorable Mention

When You’re Old (V)

By Robert L. Penick

You begin sewing the wings back onto butterflies, the ones that have not crawled so far into the past that grains of pollen are their only evidence.

You find the survivors in forgotten places: On a cassette talk tape from 1996 or on a city bus passing in a downpour.

Think of that first girlfriend, the fat kid in high school or some other victim along your warped, staggered pinball across the years. Thread needle. Prick thumb. Mend.

Your work is neat, quiet, a restoration of flight, grace, and symmetry. Your hands are not nimble but you try to repair every leaf you’ve torn.  

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Poetry: Honorable Mention 

Plywood Meth Head Jesus

By Robert L. Penick

Plywood Jesus is still praying in the front yard next to the Live and Learn Thrift Store. The Virgin Mary next to him seems reconciled to whatever the world throws at her, whatever vicissitudes get served up as the main course of life’s bloody banquet. 

Jesus, on the other hand, is earnest, aware, and worried. The grain of the wood makes it appear his face has broken out. Stress will do that, as well as methamphetamine and an unhealthy diet.

Perhaps one day he’ll get out of that yard, kick that habit or lay off the fatty foods. He’s had a tough life and deserves some quality time.  

Jesus Christ, give yourself a break.   

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Poetry: Honorable Mention

Mona Lisa Walks The Fine Line

By Todd Walker

          For what our eyes and ears seek for pleasure;  for what our hands mindfully admire;  for what our deepest yearning in our simplest of thoughts cries out for - it is our soul that must be touched to feel true joy.  

      The air was still and everything went silent as she breezed by my shoulder.  It was as if she had walked off of the canvas and breathed life again.  Mine.  Whispers hit my mind like the strokes of the great painter’s brush.

    Beauty is never still, it never sleeps and when caught it never dies - forever it is in that moment.

          I was too intoxicated to enjoy my drink for more than habit in hand.  My heart was yelling, while my eyes prodded it on.  My smile, too proud for words to escape.  I had not the right mind nor feeling of self to attempt a bridge.  Her hand tossed her hair back like waves to the beach - lightly falling and returning.  Magnificent in its simplicity.

      Pictures say so much and reveal so little truth.  Paintings show a life and all its secrets - hidden and wanting.  In the moment - irreplaceable.

          Time and place seem to be so incompatible that I let a moment end.  No, “Excuse me...”, “Do you have the year?”, “Do you validate parking?”  Just sighs and the same.  Always the same.

         But better for walks by my window, than never a step takes.   

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