The Lyric College Poetry Contest is open to undergraduates enrolled full time in an American or Canadian college or university

First Prize ~ $500
Second Prize ~ $200
Third Prize ~ $100
Honorable Mention ~ Year’s subscription and bragging rights

SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES

Poems must be original and unpublished, 39 lines or less, written in English in traditional forms, preferably with regular scansion and rhyme. We welcome up to three poems per student.

Winners are announced and published in the Winter issue of The Lyric.

Entries may be sent by mail to Tanya Cimonetti:

The Lyric College Contest
c/o Tanya Cimonetti
1393 Spear Street
South Burlington, VT 05403
Inquiries and information available at tanyacim2@aol.com

We will once again be considering collegiate contest entries by email.  Please add a short cover letter stating the traditional form that is entered, along with your name, undergraduate year, college or university, and postal address (in case you win!) to the following email:  tanyacim2@aol.com

We look forward to receiving beautifully structured and inspiring work from America’s colleges and Universities!  Entries must be postmarked or emailed October 1st-December 31st.

2023 WINNERS

First Prize – The Women At My Grandfather’s Funeral Stay Busy by Madeline Clay 

They undo all waste from the body
lay still the brow against the palm,
lay still in the bent-back scorch of sorrow
still, I lay my heart against my mother
Death begins the work of women,
death enters the dreams of the young.

Women are wearied by the yawp of the young,
and so girls see the hard truth of the body
and so we know death as a river of women
and so we know women as the toll pressed into the palm.
God begins the end and ends the beginning, so is God a mother.
God, now begins the longstep march against sorrow.

I am redaughtered, remade in the share of sorrow.
See now, agape at death we are all still young.
See, now I become half a mother.
See now my face, see no child in my body.
But understand the stillness of my palm,
the way I begin the work of women.

A friend says, “birth and death are the work of women.”
So love rebukes and broadens and overcomes sorrow,
So love rebukes and broadens and opens my palms,
So love rebukes and broadens and owns the young.
Always, women own the work of the body,
Always, my body remembers the river of its mother.

Shamefully I admit I am not as good as my mother.
In truth, I have hid from the altar-call of women.
In truth, I have hidden that responsibility under the altar-cloth of my body.
Truthfully, would that I could never know sorrow.
And know forever the great magic of the young,
believing cupped hands always means water in the palms.

Fifty acres fit into my grandfather’s palm.
And still, he could never have done the work of his mother.
And still, he could not keep the strength of the young.
And even still, he is unfolded and understood by women.
Let’s not linger in sorrow,
Let’s not linger too long in the body.

Now I know the sun was young, before it set and set again on the lives of
women.
Love is pressed against my palm, so I am nothing if not the daughter of my
mother,
who knows not to nurse sorrow, although it, too, comes from her body.

 

Second Prize – The First Leaf (inspired by “The Last Leaf” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.) by Faith Molino

I lost you to the fickle springtide breeze,
And April took your hand and broke my heart.
The world was full of flowers and honey bees,
But frostbit fingers choked me, and the start
Of nature’s ever-bounteous banqueting
Would fail to coax me from my frozen jail.
The advent of the green and youthful spring
Had wreathed me in my memories of frail
And childish fingers clasped between my own –
Instead of frostbit harbingers of grief –
Your valiant battle never to bemoan
A fate as sad and silent as the leaf
Who, falling, faces lonesome, early death
While all the rest of nature takes a breath.

Third Prize – Like Sunshine by Gabriel Davies

It feels like sunshine
on my skin
so is this love
I’ve fallen in
It’s so cliché
this corny way
that I’m in

Is this what songbirds
feel in spring
I have this funny
urge to sing
but do I leap?
the fall is steep
and fools rush in

My nervous heart and I agree
that you and I are meant to be
so with my best,
my very best
I give it free

It feels like sunshine on my skin
so this is love I’ve fallen in
do I leap, the fall is steep
but I’m in love

Honorable Mentions

A Greek Statue at the The Prado Museum by Andrew Liu, sophomore at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

My eyes, once warm, now gaze in endless fright,
Marble figure, silent, cursed in stone,
In gardens where the whispers cease at night,
Through eyes now still– a story, not her own.
Many a night, beneath the moon’s soft, weeping glow,
They say she was the fairest of them all.
Now, I see— the serpents writhe ever so,
As monuments, to spite, Athena’s thrall.
‘Vanquished the beast,’ so he will likely claim,
This hero treads with caution, slow and grim.
I’d shout to challenge, to deny his fame,
Yet, in moon’s beams, as stone, I glow so dim.
In my forced silence, secrets find their keep,
As myths live on– how I wish I could still weep.

Spaghetti Couplets by Hannah Zhang, sophomore at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA

Have you ever heard of the red strings of fate?
Gilded with parm and twirled on a plate,
drenched in sweet and scarlet fire
(a shade far richer than the violet of Tyre).

That scalding sting of heaven on earth,
its pain and beauty rivals birth!

Flame-kissed garlic, mushrooms, veal,
parsley garnishes this rose-red meal.

Thick steam billows from a raised forkful,
my tongue unwilling but my hunger forceful—

Bolognese sizzles at the edge of my lip
delizioso searing me head to toetip.

I rejoice as my miserable throat, burned through
gasps out a garbled “hooh hahh hooh.”

In the throes of spaghetti I gaze back down
at my plate of fate with a pitying frown.

Delicate daughters of hand and wheat,
how sloppy and breathy an end you’ll meet!

Praise be to the culinary valiance
of Rome’s great heirs, the marinara-blooded Italians.

Bald-Faced Wonder by Kristin Baurain, sophomore at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL

When I see a head smooth and bald
I am always enthralled
So many questions
I’m told are unfit to mention
Unless I’m to be socially mauled

When you go out, does it get cold?
Does it get wrinkly when you’re old?
Is there stubble to shave?
Does that dent in your head feel concave?
Is there a special sunscreen that’s sold?

Could you place a sundial there to tell you the hour?
Why do babies–bald themselves–see you and cower?
Do you wax it daily for maximum slip?
Is it body wash, face wash, or shampoo you equip
When you wash your…non-hair in the shower?

From whence comes the glow pale and bright?
Why your eyebrows did God not also smite?
Did you sacrifice hair for power?
Like Bezos, or Voldemort gone sour?
—I wonder, would I win in a fight?

Would you be more aerodynamic?
Would the light refraction send me into blind panic?
And if you were to bludgeon
Another curmudgeon
Whose head would shatter like a ceramic?

And why do you not wear a new wig every day?
Think of all the fun parts that you could play!
Princess, founding father, elf, clown
Why not tattoo your entire crown
Rent out your noggin for ad display?

There are a whole host of things you could do
And questions I have about your point of view
But this is the truth
Due to my youth
I hope I will never know what it’s like to be you