Literary LEO Poetry Winners

Literary LEO Poetry First Place

Soft Pink by Katie Hughbanks

She wore a dress such soft pink that
mauve lilies came to mind.
In the throng of churchgoers
I could not call out; she did not see me
but I caught glimpses
and marveled.
Mom.
It was in a dream last night -
my mother in a crowded church,
both of us at Mass.
Separate, still, together.
She was no longer in a casket,
not even in a wheelchair,
waiting for Communion.
How long had it been
since she’d stood in a pew?
A holy day, perhaps,
a holiday from her heaven.
Did a promise of redemption,
a certain salvation
bring her to this service?
Did the same sweet hope bring me,
her daughter?
No matter -
Even without words, with no touch,
she was with me.
Her special-occasion dress marked the moment
sacred.
I woke to gray winter, and
my dream slipped slowly from my mind’s eye.
Disappointment was my morning's breakfast.
But out the kitchen window
a cloudy sky awoke,
gently stained soft pink,
full of grace,
like a mauve lily.

Literary LEO Poetry Second Place

On Humphries Rd, Georgia by Kristi Apostel

For fifty years
She’s been holding up this place
Even when he was here
Making biscuits, frying chops, squeezing easy cheese
Here, we

Learned about this place
Snapping beans from backyard hills
Playing cards from folding chairs
Watching shows from yellowed screens
In this place, she

Was left alone
Six months before I married
And remains as such

Listen to this place
Taking pictures down from shelves
Saving china from front-yard sales
Keeping flags from unknown lives
Of them

For twenty years
She kept holding up this place
Baking box cakes, buying hams, squeezing easy cheese
Now, we begin
Again

Literary LEO Poetry Third Place

In Passing by Shelly Taylor

I heard that your son died
Being a Good Samaritan
To bad people
I did not mention it when I saw you
It had been years since we last spoke
And I wanted you to have a
Conversation
Where no one talked about
Death

Literary LEO Poetry Honorable Mention

Nach Bar: An American Cinquain & Triolet By Romana Bereneth

Nach bar
A night alone
Take stock of doppelbocks
No one has missed me for hours, now.
That’s fine.

This house.
My life declines.
I once had a good life.
I had fun with two silly dogs.
Long gone.

Nach bar
Funny corner
You’d have to be from here.
Tucked in a booth I could be your
Nick Cave.

My clothes.
Tumble around
the inside of a shared
piece of domestic equipment.
Panties.
Blood-soaked,
my underclothes.
“I’ll just push ‘em on through.”
An uninvited invitee
Hands on.

Nach bar.
It’s Wednesday Night.
Where’s Jacob Duncan now?
Where’s f***ing jazz when I need it?
Long gone.

Music.
Fucking COVID.
Desperate creatives
Went to Nachbar looking for jazz.
Wrong night.

I ran
From the Highlands
And out of Butchertown
To Germantown, where I still feel
Alive.

I have no place to go.
Louisville’s night life?
Receding choices in cellphone glow
I have no place to go.
Degradation's obvious; you had to know. Louisville is a knife.
I have no place to go.
But streets belonging to these who love to live the lie.

Literary LEO Poetry Honorable Mention

Now, In Midland By Sophie Lyn

Everyday after class, mom told him the story of Dixie
The Dolls, her high-school drill team of perky girls with white socks‘n saddle shoes full of grit
after dancing in Texas dirt, she would make out with her boyfriend in his Honda, colored plum.
I knew the story a hundred times over. She told him, “I’m tired of your whiny ass, go watch TV
I’m not tellin’ you no more.” can’t stand the noise, mom, the way you yell. Your face looks ugly
so ugly, on the terrace, I’m gonna go smoke. I’m tired, my throat hurts, something I can’t itch.
Wish I could reach in my mouth past my teeth and scratch it with a clean fingernail.

“Don’t you ever talk to me like that.” She targets with a chipped red polish, contorted fingernail
that, 27 spins ago, used to shine a worldly bronze, like baton twirlers, made to last in a Dixie
parade that trooped outside counties, outside borders, outside states. I sung the dog’s itch
because his paws scraped so hard on the terrace deck, he was our lucky find, our plum
which mom said she used to be, at fifteen and a hundred pounds, now rotten, swollen, ugly.
She just blabs. I suck in savory smoke, listening to the static hum of the laughing TV.

Late Tuesday nights, I like watching Password reruns on the TV
which stopped working last May because he snipped it’s cables, so mom pierced a fingernail
in his crown. “There, I snipped your cables.” He grows mom’s face when he cries, same ugly
dirt muddled white flag blows from the backyard in sun-bleached dirt, white pebbled grit.
I hide in my own stomach, I rest on fatty yellow flesh and undigested chunks of plum.
“You have thirty seconds… the password is itch…”

Now and again I think about her pinch on my wrist, It was like a mother’s. Not a pain, but an itch
gentle when she wanted, so I could be gentle in myself. I whisper thanks. I drink, I watch my TV.
I am eight years and five states away now, away from Dixie.
I chip polish flakes from my dullest fingernail
that I use to rid my teeth of yellow, sharpness, and grit.
My hair, my manner, my nose. I look so beautiful. I feel so beautiful…I’m waiting to be ugly.

The newspaper couldn’t have made her look more ugly
than the words in her column. Glass shattered over my kitchen floor. I cast my bitten plum
across the aisle of mud-flaked carpet and shitty seats on the cheap flight I took back to Dixie.
Him and mom, mom on a summer patio, mom pregnant. Mom wore a lip-y smile, fit for TV
or a b-movie. Bright blacks and pale purples and rot not manicured enough from her Fingernails
I can still see it all. She would hate this. She would really fucking despise this. My jaw Grits

Together, my black stockings and loafers leave on my skin their grit.
It’s the end of my strength, I turn off the TV
he was watching, sobbing, shaking hands and receiving shoulders. My eyes itch

I grow mom’s face when I cry, ugly
we seem to forget–I look down at my green, chipped polish Fingernail–
that she would laugh, like when he stuck his hand in her pies and pulled out a Plum.
So I tell him the story of dixie.

Now, in Midland, I spin in Texas grit storms and saddle shoes, I march in a Dixie parade
that spans through an itch in my life. I laugh at satellite TV and red fingernails and I bruise like a plum.
That sight through a weathered, ugly eyeglass…I feel so beautiful now.

Literary LEO Poetry Honorable Mention

Wheat, Honeycomb, and Wine By Anna Liao

Sober for once,
for one moment.
Clarity through the fog
of the fog,
the second mist,
the squinting of your
bleary eyes.

In the dry heat of the summer,
begin again.
Push up through small cracks,
past rocks,
drain the gut rot,

despite, despite, despite,

the riot,
the terminus,
the sun in your eyes,
the heat on your neck,
the laughter of other kids.

Turn beneath the stars.
Hold hope like water.
Find a reason to leave the city
and swim in some river.
How terrifying the possibility of what you could
be,
what you could say, or think—
that your mouth might be all teeth.

Everything is dog shaped when you’ve lost your dog:
every tree, every bike, every boulder, every animal on the street.
Every shape is a shadow of the thing you want to see.

Whether there’s a god or there isn’t a god
outside of your mind,
wait for faith as a thing that's touchable;
don’t pick a side.
Find hope in wind
through your fingertips.

Despite, despite, despite.

Literary LEO Poetry Honorable Mention

Did You Know They Give Chocolate to Dogs Before Euthanasia? By Carly Fawcett

We joked that death was all you wanted
while you preferred to sniff for raisins than a milk bone
Maybe death was kind
or maybe you were strong
for you evaded his grasp day after day
and he let you sleep in my bed night after night
your nose finding the crook of my arm without fail
in a nightly dance of chasing sleep
until you caught it
and it was just you and me

I’ll always keep you warm
I’ll wrap my hands around your cold feet
and carry you wherever you want to go
because I want you to feel my warmth forever
in the way they said I could stay as long as I wanted
and I couldn’t let you go
because if I kept petting the spot on your neck it wouldn’t get cold

I held you in my arms in the white room
the same way I did the night before
Restless, no spot on the bed was right
and you looked to me for answers
I wish I could’ve heard all your questions
but there is only one language we both speak
so I held you
and sleep was yours, love was ours

When we’ve known each other for all of our memorable lives
it’s strange to think I won’t know you tomorrow
but I will, won’t I?
My mind will play tricks on me
You'll be a blanket in my sheets
the ends curled outward into legs
and I'll hate to use it for fear of making you cold
before realizing you just want to keep me warm, too

They said I should put my grief somewhere else
so I’m putting it here
in hopes that the universe
or maybe a passing bird from your backyard
will pick it up and carry it elsewhere
so all that’s left is you and me
at home on a blanket
finally finding sleep.