Poetry contest

Yesterday I was in a mad rush to edit, print, and find the office where I could turn in my poetry submission for the Academy of American Poets Contest at Cal Poly. I turned in two poems, here is one of them.

Chelsea King


Gifts of God
corroding his frayed soul.

Acidic thoughts of forbidden bliss,
arrayed out splendidly

next to the fuchsia orchids
swaying gently in the wind.

Figure of fatal fashion,
hair swept beautifully apart

her delicate face.
Frozen forever in death’s caress.

Given to him
and taken too.

That exquisite pearl of
timeless charm.

A flash of life,
like the picture in the frame

surrounded by flowers
next to her urn.

Too soon,
far too soon.

Spring begets winter,
birth begets death.

Summer only comes to the
privileged majority.


Blind though they are
to the life within.

We are all more alive,
once we’ve been dead.

Or at least glimpsed that
archaic fiend,

sickle in one hand,
our lover in the other.

Off to the realm of shadows,
with what we just now consider most dear.

A salty rain fell on that hollow
patch of ground.

Hidden by Armani, Chanel, and Prada
clouds—

Lightning flashes of wrath
towards the one who

gave her hand—unwillingly—to him:
archaic fiend.


By Jesse Madera