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Minato-Ku, Tokyo
by Phyllis Cobb
1st Place

I walk the dogs
in morning
darkness
among embassies
and diplomatic
ghosts.

No trace
of previous
war.

No planes
droning overhead
on zulu time.
Raucous crows
instead,
meander above
the morning.
One brave
old tree
listens.

Digging Up Peonies
by Vivian C. Shipley
Honorable Mention

Overcoming fear of stalks that are too close,

I remind myself it's a Lexington, that mist
on fields meant rattlesnakes curled in rows
of corn would be cold, sluggish. Like prying

out potatoes with my fingers, I dig up tubersas if I could lift my father, seeded with cancer,

if only for a day from gravity, from ground.
My parents know what I know -- this is the end;

they will not return to this house my father built.
No refugee in Kosovo, wheelbarrowing

his grandmother to safety, I will bring as much
of Kentucky, of their dirt as I can carry with me
on our flight to Connecticut. A bride, moving
to New Haven over thirty years ago, I have
not taken root. I cannot explain this urge
to go to creekstone fences my father stacked,

dig up box after box of peonies I will bank
into granite piled along my side garden

so my father can see pink, fuchsia blossoming
from his bed. Is this what revision is, change

of location, spreading, to retell my story
another time, in another soil? Unable to untie
what binds me to Kentucky, to bones of all
those who are in my bones, I will save what

I can of my mother, of my father from this earth,
from the dissolution that binds us after all.

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Happy
by Kristen von Hoffmann
1st Place

My feet - wheels bumple over the gravel as Jack
pulls the leash
then me and Jack
we glide
onto smoothness that wraps around the vast bean of grass
When I look onto the park
my eyes feel happy, looking at the openness ...
As we skate by the stream I hear an empty thumping like a hollow
plastic bottle
lapping the
wall.
I look and it's a boy bumping his
drum for the
geese. I love this time at dusk when my long day is calmed by
cold.

This Is My Fear
by Marina Moses
Honorable Mention

This is my fear today:
that they will cut down all the trees.
That's the one thing I hate about spring
They trim the tops of the trees
and every year I am afraid
that they will go too far
and all the new green
will turn brown
and die.

This is my fear today:
that they will think me insensitive
for while I worry that my trees will be cut down
over there they are cutting people
with machine guns and chain saws
and the land is turning dead, and brown
and all the new people
and all the old people
fall
and die.

This is my fear today:
that they will go too far.

That we will go too far.

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Forced from Home
by Jonathan Nagata
1st Place

Dear Mother,
I smell the smoke of the burning buildings.
I feel the fire, burning in my heart.
The hum of the bombers is stuck in my mind.
The cries of the children fuel my fear.
Ashes fly up and blind me.
All of the men, filled with sorrow.
All of the women, shedding their tears.
Will I ever see you again?

Peace Paz
by Edna Caballeros
Honorable Mention

Smile! Sonre
Be Happy! Se Féliz!
Have Fun. Diviertate.
Be Together. Siempre
esten juntos.
Play! Juga!
always have peace.
Siempre tengan Paz.
Never think of war,
only think of peace.
Nunca pienses en la
guerra, solo en la Paz!

Ode to the Swans
by Jeffrey Hartman
Honorable Mention

As two swans glide gently over
the moon lit lake
they lift off into the air
like a silent wind gliding over the tops
of the trees. As they land
not a ripple heads
to the cold shore.
They are like two white angels.
i wish I could fly like them,
their necks come out like a shooting arrow
to pierce the cold sky
but so gentle how snow falls to the
ground.