2019 Poetry Contest Winners
The Donn Goodwin Prize of $100
Awarded to Brigid F.
Returning to Over-the-Water, Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry
"What is that?" I ask
What are these?
I want to know their name
Make them familiar to me
The birds dip and flutter
Their colours and songs new
A few seem to ring a bell
Almost Midwestern yet askew
The yellow flowers sway
The fields dotted with plants
Spiders crawl and flies zip
The winds make the rushes dance
Bluebell, cowslip, furze, snowdrop
Blackbird, swallow, wren, magpie
They cover the ditches, lanes and fields
They populate the trees and sky
I want to knowk their names
To learn something more
Make them my own in my new home
List them off when I look out the door
Sanderling, goldcrest, corncrake, thrush
Foxglove, bog cotton, dock leaf, nettle
Their names as sweet as their song
Their names as sweet as their smell
I want to know the bird
Whose song wakes me at half four
I want to know the insect
That scurries across the cottage floor
Alone in the cemetery the songs are quiet
No sound of bird song, buzzing wings, or wave
I want to know which blossoms I picked
And laid on my great-grandparents' grave
The Joseph Gahagan Prize of $100
Awarded to Sylvia C.
Erin Go Bragh Whispered the Four-Leaf Clover
Our street was an undersized litter box
with no modesty cover.
Danny swung hand-over-hand
across the electric wires
connecting our house to the Slade's.
Walter Slade's teenage scream cracked
open the summer haze
when I pushed my fingers into his whirring
push mower, which bit sharp
and splattered red jewels
against the green smell of cut grass.
I ran hard down the back alley
until I could taste all the rusty blades
of Lancaster's east end.
But I was the least impulsive kid around.
My mother flipped her wig
at the doctor who blamed her for Danny's
hot-dogging kicks all-day long.
It was his high IQ that made him so dumb.
Like when he got the five-finger discount
on the bent slinky from the Slade's
backyard and Mrs. Slade raged
all afternoon until my mother lost it
and accused her of being German.
My mom, the self-procalimed
"Irish Slob of Integrity," by which she
meant her derangements were always
on-point. Like when she marched up
and down Clark Street beating a big bass
drum after Mass that time when you stood
up and said you didn't see any point to men
and why should you have to marry one?
Mom will one day imagine herself
a reincarnated Emily Dickinson -- the part
about keeping to her bedroom and speaking
rarely, but with unexpected punctuation.
She'll say reincarnated too loudly into
the screen of the confessional, causing
the priest to give up darning his socks.
So, Erin go Bragh, whispered the four-leaf
clover, plucked from the small square
of yard just ahead of Walter Slade's mower.