1st Place
Désolée
By Miera Rao
Désolée mes enfants, mes enfants, désolée
We’ve decimated your world, we’ve darkened your play
My unborn innocents, what can I offer thee
Can I promise you the childhood that once belonged to me
The sunlight has dimmed now, it is golden no more
Only destruction and disease knocking at your door
How green will your valley be, in Paradise there’s Hell
Soon Shasta too will rage, the Pacific will swell
The dazzle of missiles mirrored on poisoned lakes
Means, more than birthdays you’ll attend more wakes
Leas of lost lives and severed limbs surround you
Smells of burnt hair and flesh – a human barbecue
You’ll sing dirges accompanied by the wheeze in your lungs
And weave cat’s cradles with gizzards you’ve strung
My darlings, you’ll yet find your frolic that childhood decrees
Splashing in puddles, red to your knees
In ashy wastelands of gun-toting toddlers and three-legged strays
You’ll play hide-and-seek in dark coffins and graves
Désolée mes enfants, my wretched little ones
The world is upside down, what have we done?
Miera Rao, a writer who loves words of all shapes and fonts, has won awards for her creative non-fiction and poetry. Her short stories have been published by the Sand Hill Review Press, in the award-winning Fault Zone anthology series, and Flash Fiction Magazine.
2nd Place
In Sickness and In Health
By Marilyn J. Dykstra
In youth, we hiked up mountain peaks,
Chased thunderstorms over passes,
Crossed knife edges and snowy patches,
Waded icy alpine streams that rush downhill.
Turning sixty, my knee began to creak and ache
Then replaced with titanium, plastic, and glue,
You cooked, cared, and coached me back to health,
So we could hike through hills of purple lupine.
But tonight, you lie in bed and wake me up
To fetch our son to lift you out
In dead of night to take a piss
And to your face bring a smile or flinch.
This morning, I lead you beside creek banks of poppies
Waiting for thumps from my cane in your hand.
Marilyn J. Dykstra, passionate about walking in nature ever since she walked out the backdoor as a child growing up in the Finger Lakes of upstate New York, now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two young adult children. She is currently writing a memoir, To Hell and Back, about her experience hiking with her husband and their dog while her husband suffered a rare heart infection and massive heart failure during the pandemic.
3rd Place
Bringer of Life
With gratitude to Otis Redding and Anastacia-Reneé
By Yeva Johnson
The daughter of these three powerful mothers
would never lack for adventure.
It was just about half past nine,
and they were swimmin’ by the lock of a ray,
Yemanjá and Octavia Butler’s fledgling herself when
the azure waters swelled up
and their female offspring was plopped on the copper
sand, gasping for breath, crawling and clawing
her way into the world.
She was no Athena,
just the child of the Black
Venus of Willendorf.
She was no Athena, crawling
and clawing her way into
the world about half past nine
when she spied Octavia Butler’s
fledgling flirting at the water’s edge
with Yemanjá. She was gasping
for breath, and was so in awe,
dipping and diving
her way through the world.
She was no Athena,
more like a diasporic African
water woman on life’s adventure
and she was the daughter
of these three powerful mothers.
Yeva Johnson, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and musician whose work appears in various literary journals, explores interlocking caste systems and possibilities for human co-existence in our biosphere. Yeva is a past Show Us Your Spines Artist-in-Residence, winner of the 2020 Mostly Water Art & Poetry Splash Contest, and poet in QTPOC4SHO, a San Francisco Bay Area artists’ collective.
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