Best in Poetry at the 2026 contest: Odd Dreams
Clover
In my dreams I stand around
In nothingness;
no light, no sound
Then sadly or not,
A man throws a shot
It knocks my head
then enters the net
And scores the winning pot
I look around for apologies
They’re all celebrating, you see
But I make one out from the vicious crowd
For he was oddly familiar
It was the man I see in my desperate daydreams
In the memories I keep deep down
The man I cry about when I think of him somewhen
The man I want undead
Time warps itself, and in his arms
I plea
“Don’t leave me!”
But he didn’t even hear me
That dastardly man, I begin to assert.
You just won’t stop
Until I plea
Into Dirt
A carnival with hoops and strings
Beautiful lanterns, the prettiest things
Wild hair and skirts that stick
Out like sunflowers, with petals like rings
And there’s this woman, strong as can be
Smile a-gleam, eyes twinkling
She takes my hand and leads me onstage
I hope to God that she can’t see the reds of my face
I want to believe that this life that I’m living-
I want to believe that for once.
This is winning
Time warps itself, and she is no longer there
I’m alone in my pursuits of a destiny so fair
So wild
So free,
So that it’s okay to be me
But alas.
Time warps itself, and she is no longer there
A sea of butterflies whip my attention this way
And that
They storm together, amalgamations of orange
And black
I reach out to grab one, but they elude my grasp.
In the tide of Monarchs, I am a Viceroy
I, too, can fly
but not as far.
Not as high.
Dependent on the monarch’s pattern
Am I still myself if my face is of someone else?
What shapes an identity?
My mind? My experiences? My autonomy?
Or is it who others see and expect me to be?
Who decides who a person is?
For if Viceroys have to don the armor
of a Monarch
But not the Crown,
then a phony is what it is
A stranger to the bloodline, an heir to what is not mine
And in the midst of it is blue.
Then I’ll stop by that beautiful grave
Upon the rolling hills and pave-ed way
Push my head into the dirt, and assert
that not in my wildest dreams
would I have believed
that You would ever leave me.
But perhaps it’s Fate
In her cruelest of ways, Eyes a-gleam and smile twinkling,
That says She has a play;
A meaning
To everything that She’s done,
That She plans to do,
That She promises to have in store
For You
A butterfly lands on my shoulder, blue in all his glory
And in the distance it’s the cries,
mellow and celebratory,
Regaling the tale
Of Your valiant, clutch-time victory.
An ode to our minds, our mutual questions as humans, our want to be free, and to my Uncle: my guiding light, a bright blue butterfly in this world in which I reside.