OPA

2020 Fall Adult Contest Results for Theme/Community Judge: Emmett Wheatfall First Place Winner for Theme: “Friday Night after COVID” by Christen Pagett We’ll walk to Fitzgerald’s at the corner, and I’ll order the darkest beer with the deepest froth and tip him more than 20%, even though he’s never smiled at us before. We’ll meld […]

Fall 2020 Winning Poems in the Traditional/Pantoum Category Judge:  Erica Goss First Place: “Say Their Names” by Dan Kaufman As we step toward justice, we must say their names. Mr. Arbery, Ms. Taylor, Mr. Floyd, discarded while Black. Knee-necked, bulleted, erased by cold aims. The roll call continues, each a bitter flashback. Mr. Floyd, Mr.

Fall 2020 Winning Poems for the New Poets Category Judge: Eleanor Berry First Place: “The Outcrop” by Vicki Pedone Here I am again, on the dry shoreline of this dying lake, gazing at your immutable hardness with frustration and not a little anger. How many years must I come while you haughtily guard your secrets?

Fall 2020 Winning Poems for the Members Only Category Judge: Amy Miller First Place in Members Only: “At the Frenchglen Hotel” by Scottie Sterrett We gather with other guests, mesmerized as butterflies, opulent in cellophane envelopes, emerge from two shoeboxes. The LA lawyer, resplendent in Oakleys and Lauren has spent himself on Steens Mountain collecting

Third Place in Poet’s Choice: “The Ballad of Chaos Nightingale” by Charles Castle My name is Chaos Nightingale. My mother christened me, but it was my father’s song I followed here. Come with me. We begin as I’ve begun, and we’ll end no differently. I am bent by age in these somber times. My back

Second Place in Poet’s Choice: “Temenos” by Alicia Byrne Keane is the name of the surgery, the street is a jeweled neatness of bookshops, I know the doctor’s number off by heart and I can’t afford this synesthesia of fours and nines showing up yellow ochre or plum-bruised in the clang dread makes. Ringing the

OPA Fall 2020 Contest Results in the Poet’s Choice Category “To all the poets who submitted to Poet’s Choice: it was a deep pleasure to read your work. It is the nature of contests that only a very few can be recognized, and I regret the disappointment felt by the many – having often experienced