Adult Contest Winners

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

Congratulations to all the winning poets and poems in the 2020 Fall Contest, and thank you to each contestant who entered! The poetry was lovely! Fall Contest Chairperson – Susan Morse OPA Fall 2020 Contest Results: Poet’s Choice: Pepper Trail, judge First Place: “Rise on Up” – Mark Hammerschick Second Place: “Temenos” – Alicia Byrne

Baby, It’s Cold Outside (a Vivianne sonnet variation) Barbara Blanks As embryos we each explore the wall of womb that holds us. It’s the first place joy is felt—mom’s heartbeat like a lullaby.   Cocooned in touch, that’s how we interact. We’re chastised just as soon as we can crawl or walk. Just look! Hands off!

Arachnidæa: Line Drawings Stephen Pollock I. Extravagance at dawn  — your finest threads are strung with pearls and you, a brooch with a clasp. Magnify the shiny spheres to divine that each conceals a miniature, an image of struggling wings, of life undone. Pass at the critical angle, and they flash and snap in the

Mind Gloss David Hedges Mind in its purest play is like some bat That beats about in caverns all alone, Contriving by a kind of senseless wit Not to conclude against a wall of stone. —Richard Wilbur, from “Mind” Mind in its purest play is like some bat That magically connects with knuckleballs. No matter

Judged by Lynn Otto 1st Honorable Mention: “Missing” by Suzanne Sigafoos, Portland, OR 2nd Honorable Mention: “Women’s Day at Sauna” by Michelle Williams, Portland, OR 3rd Honorable Mention: “Facing Backward on the Train” by Dan Kaufman, Central Point, OR Thank you to all who submitted poems. Reading them while practicing social distancing to prevent the