Our Spring Poetry Contest was filled with amazing creatives and so many new friends in poetry. We thank you for your entries and support, our hope is to see you again in future poetry contests. Thanks to our sponsors over at BRAVO Pay and I Am Root Apparel for making the prizes for this contest phenomenal.
Catch our interview with all three of the winners live on Instagram this Friday, June 4th hosted by blog member Niamey Thomas. (RSVP below.)
3rd Place Winner | Arian Katsimbras
Arian Katsimbras is a writer. He lives in Reno, Nevada.
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Poem:
Affirmations for Grounding by Don Shuan
Growing Up, All the Mobile Homes looked like orphan teeth in the Nevada desert. As a boy I dragged myself street by street, searched in every man’s hand for food, clothes, medicine. I looked in every retired sky dragged open and talking me into rough repair, searched in the burning head wound where my stepfather’s steel hands coaxed my mute blood out in puddles, and those hands are still there like a crude halo threatening to glow. Every tree was tinder, what’s left for treehouses? I hid instead in crawlspaces with only earthworms for music until I became old enough to know what haunting was by listening through the vents to the thunder about electrical bills, about who the fuck is she, about silence after the dull *click* as my mother’s ribs caved, that familiar sound of grief’s keep, its needed maintenance, singing along to its own tradition; because I grew up where graveyard homes baked deep in the western heat, from out doors like starving apertures came the chorale of mothers and sons, singing the human death dance, the constancy of the poor. This is the last time I’ll write I grew up where fathers levitated like electricity in power lines, throaty hum constant, tire fire kind of dangerous, the black eyes my stepfather gifted me my mom momma, ma’ please make a book of matches burn for days like this, let the sky and earth reclaim what they will of these wasted boxes, metal bodies and waterless pine, reclaim our fathers who holler in the street high on their want for death, high above us like patron saints of the hammer, of quick, clean brutality.
Arian Katsimbras will win $50 thanks to our friends at BRAVO Pay and merch from our home team I Am Root Apparel. Thank you again to all of the contestants, voters, judges, and supporters.
Stay tuned for the summer contest www.iamrootco.com/poetrycontest.
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