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[with poems from Pinesong 2024]
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Grown
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– and you wonder why on good days, she is a fledgling
++++ fallen from its nest. Wrists encircled
++++ ++++ in bird bones, origami limbs
++++ awash in green. To be a body
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in this world is to take comfort
++++ in arrow-straight lines. This is why girls these days
++++ ++++ exist horizontally, among
++++ tree roots thick with stories.
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She tells you she would like to disappear
++++ into the silver curve of the sun. You see it
++++ ++++ in the way she sucks on her fingertips, the way
++++ the sunglow stains her eyes gold. You imagine
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she would fade this way – downy wings
++++ tucked close. Watercolor irises
++++ ++++ soaking into the canvas of the sky,
++++ the smoothest of stones beneath her tongue.
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In the meantime, she means to craft a crown
++++ inlaid with seeds. Gathers cracked corn,
++++ ++++ yellowing wheat. Every crippled thing
++++ she has ever loved.
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You wonder if she means to break
++++ the way the sky does. Float feather
++++ ++++ into her hair like cloud cover, and let
++++ the leaves sliver her apart.
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Luna Hou
Pinesong 2024 – Undergraduate Awards, Second Place
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Why does a person write?
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The mind is a puppy intent on chewing everything to tatters. The mind is a genie in a bottle, entrapped, enclosed, desperate for some way out – the granting of wishes being simply its impulse of gratitude. The mind is a ship lost on a dark sea but remembering dawn and yearning to rediscover the eastern horizon. The mind is altogether solitary and horrifyingly isolated and grasping for any connection, any at all!
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Or perhaps the mind is a whirling planetoid whose gravity and momentum are approbation and a relentless hunt for its 15 minutes of fame. No, no, that’s the answer to a different question – Why does a person share what they have written? And of a multiplicity of answers perhaps the most cynical. How about this alternative: Joy shared is joy squared (or cubed). One mind running is a hamster in a wheel, but two minds in tandem create the traction that slowly, surely sets the earth spinning.
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The mind is a stone on top of a hill. Potential energy . . . plus energy of activation. The mind picks up a pen, but not until its words reach out to another mind does it begin to roll.
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Miss you. Would like to pitch a tent with you.
++++ After Gabrielle Calvocoressi
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Do not care if you have money for the campsite.
Would love to pick this one up, pick up fire-
wood, while I’m at it. Set your lawn chair close
to mine. Miss you. Would like to stir a pot
of mac & cheese on the Coleman stove
like you used to when we all got so tired
of the city. Sit around the picnic table,
orange sauce oozing through white paper plates.
Would love to walk up Foscoe Creek with you,
all the way to the dam. Damn, I miss you.
Wish you would unzip your guilt body.
Would love to help yo burn it. Imagine
how light you could feel. How free your arms.
We could fling the frisbee until dark. Pop open
Pepsis, pop some corn. Would like to ask you
to leave that book on the pew. Miss you. Wish you
believed what you say – that you are truly forgiven.
Just for today, let’s turn of the tv, forget who
is President, not argue about the earth’s shape.
The breeze off the river feels holy. I’d love you
to feel it. Love to show you there’s nothing to forgive.
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Kathie Collins
Pinesong 2024 – Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love Award, First Place
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Revelry
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As a squirrel in the top of the highest hickory
is silently teasing a glorious strobe show
of dawn’s golden light to tickle its way down
through the leaves to the ground and a yellow-billed
cuckoo somewhere past the pasture is cooing
a so soothing, solo reverie, a fawn is navigating
so noisily through these woods, I’m certain there must be
an exasperated doe somewhere very close, having serious
doubts about motherhood . . . .
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Caren Stuart
Pinesong 2024 – Katherine Kennedy McIntyre Light Verse Award, Fist Place
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Thank you, all you writers, who share what you have written! Pinesong 2024 is the annual anthology of the North Carolina Poetry Society. The book is the collected poems by winners of the Society’s contests, eleven contests for adults, four youth, one for college undergrads. Each May, winners are invited to read their poems at Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities in Southern Pines, NC. This has become a much anticipated celebration, showcasing the breadth of submissions and talent of the writers involved, as exhibited by today’s sampling of selections.
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Contest judges are prominent poets from around the country; the Poet Laureate category and youth and undergrad contests are limited to North Carolina residents, but all other contests are open and unrestricted. The next NC Poetry Society contest entry period opens November 15, 2024.
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NC Poetry Society: since 1932 supporting, promoting, and celebrating poetry. More information about membership and contests is available HERE
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Welcome to Lagos, Nigeria
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I walked though the jet bridge,
studier in New York’s terminal,
off my third flight in 36 hours.
The air in the airport was rich.
I was greeted by aunties, uncles,
cousins, salesmen with bracelets.
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I sat in the patchy black leather seat
of my grandmother’s ‘93 4Runner
sounding like the last mile in Africa.
The stucco house was surrounded
by a 12-foot-high barbed-wire gate.
So many cousins I had never seen
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all playing Ludo, the board game
like Monopoly. Aunties never seen
plucking my cheeks, telling me stories
about myself I had never heard.
All while my mother’s eldest brother
was being murdered by the terrorist
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group Boko Haram while trying
to find a Christmas tree for us.
This December marks the 8th
anniversary of my absence
from Lagos, Nigeria. Little
brother, I still see you running
with me though the Christmas
tree lot and hiding in Pineville.
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Kenny Ogbata
Pinesong 2024 – Sherry Pruitt Award (grades 10-12), Second Place
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Luna Hou is a rising senior at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC.
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Kathie Collins lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is a mythologist and Jungian, and co-founder & creative director of Charlotte Lit.
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Caren Stuart lives in wild Chatham County, North Carolina. Her many creative endeavors are born of and bloom with joy.
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Kenny Ogbata is a rising senior at Charlotte Latin School, Charlotte NC.
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Chris Abbate lives in North Carolina. His latest collection is Words for Flying, FutureCycle Press (2022).
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Setting You Free
++++ for Rosemary
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Think of your arm
as a wing,
the shoulder a hinge
that made you fly.
When it tore, you felt
as if the surgeon had turned his anger
into it, as if he had pressed
the weight of himself
into the hurt, two screws
twisted into humerus.
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During recovery, you tripped
over a throw rug
to answer an impatient doorbell,
an accident, but a new crack
to let some light in,
for another surgeon
to undo the tightness,
unscrew the anger and
make the hinge supple,
give the wing motion.
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Imagine falling to rise,
ascending again
to survey the dark
hem of the Maine Coastline,
its green blanket
of pines nestled against
the chin of your house.
Imagine becoming a bird again,
as you once were,
as you always have been.
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Chris Abbate
Pinesong 2024 – Jean Williams Poetry of Disability, Disease, and Healing, Honorable Mention
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❦ ❦ ❦
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V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 