Contests & Awards

The Virgin Learning to Read by Julia Griffin The mother smiles, one finger poised to guideHer daughter’s eyes along a page of wood.      The child’s small hands hold up the book: a good     Pupil.  We cannot see the text inside. How kindly those old sculptors understood: – Behold a girl, her parents’ care and pride,Endowed with a humanity deniedTo … Read More

Gronnets by Julia Griffin My mother’s mother’s father looked like Einstein:So Grandma said, and photos bear it out.Sadly, the likeness stopped there, though no doubtHe had his strengths: finding his prospects fenced inBy dangerous Europe, fearing to be pounced on,He sailed for Liberty, alone, a scoutFor wife and son.  They joined him, in aboutFive years: … Read More

The Messenger by Susan Delaney Spear 1.This, she recalls. Mommy piles her Along with friends into the tan Dodge Dart,the ride, smooth on asphalt, and the dustthe car stirs on the lane down to the farm.It is her fifth birthday. Dark purple grapes decorate the trellis. Old Shep’s growlscares her slack-kneed, back among adultscircled up … Read More

An Aging Poet Explains by David Southward The problem is that people are like trees.Although they think and speak and walk around,they’re growths of buried systems no one sees—whose roots, like an inverted broccoli crown,anchor them to the soils of home and school.While summer wraps their limbs in gathered light,this hidden half digests a springtime … Read More

for Davey at 16 As you gaze at the falls, unaware that I’m there,I survey your brow’s drop-off, the bluff of your chin,and the stone that bobs high in your neck, sharp and thin;the bright eddies and riffles that play in the hairthat meanders from temple to earlobe to nape;and above all, your eyes, squinting … Read More

1. For daughters of the Vietnamese diaspora, it is not easy to obtain ao dài: the tightly clinging bodice with its high stiff collar, joined by hook-and-eye-type clasper, its long slim raglan sleeves two tubes of whispery silk, must be custom-fitted to the size and contours of the wearer’s neck, arms, thighs. The girl must … Read More

It is with happiness and pride that we announce the winners of the 2020 Book Awards. Category 1) (Author may have more than one book) was won by Richard Foerster for Boy on a Doorstep, and Category 2) (Author’s first book) was won by Maya Phillips for Erou. The author of the winning book in … Read More

The Merrimac River, broad and placid, flows down to it from the New Hampshire hills, broken at the falls to make frothy havoc on the rocks, foaming on over ancient stone towards a place where the river swings about in a wide and peaceful basin, moving on now around the flank of the town, on … Read More

Your trapezoidal face, like Townes van Zandt’s, makes my pulse race more than the razzmatazz of Times Square, makes my p- and t-waves dance more than a jailbreak out of Alcatraz. Look how my EKG goes crazy now; look how my EEG goes mad, synapses zapping and zigzagging everywhere—wow! I’m wakeful as a raft about … Read More