Winners of Second Annual Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry Prize First prize, $500, donated by Carmen’s family, is awarded to Sarnia’s Margie Kenedy, a retired archeologist who recently moved to Sarnia. Kenedy’s poem “Fusion – An Immigration Story” resonated with the judges, and Jim Ziolkowski remarked, “The story is very similar to my mother’s story of an
Worlds fused confused as I coil from one to the other and back Northerly winds sooth cool pseudo heat. Gone are the scorched canyons. The taste of sweet viscous dates fades away with sticky maple sap drips salted sea diluted by a shimmering lake. We too are mellower now, as we grow older in this
The tulips of bold spring colours were in full bloom now they linger in liminal. I haven’t chucked them into the bin at the faintest wrinkling of petals; decay has its wondrous mutations— the purple petals flap open an unfurled upside down umbrella, exposing the pistil and stigma—so immodestly phallic! and the curled red
The lake waits all night for me. Fettered boats rock and drift gently, answering unseen currents. Tadpoles, soft black bodies like commas, wriggle along the honeycombed shallows, awaiting their metamorphosis. As morning ages wind wrinkles the lake’s skin, but as I slip into blue its fingers are all satin. You have to understand: poetry
A year of catechism lessons to distill My eight-year-old soul for God, Had led to so much anticipation for the moon- Like wafers that would magically transubstantiate. The array: an illustrated children’s missal With gilded edges; a silver rosary; Lace gloves; satin pouch; gold chalice pin; A tiara of blossoms and a poofy silk
How well-crafted is the daffodil how like a poem growing from one tight-fisted sphere requiring nurture from deep surroundings shyly the leaves emerge, flourish in tender green, the slender stalk in triumph lifts the full-blown blossom, a bright signal to the world, the beauty of life.