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Editor’s Choice: 2024 Philadelphia Stories Poetry Contest

I wanted it pink, then blue, yellow.

I wanted it beating on the table.

What kind of paint sticks to flesh,

covers the inside?

Widening in the abdominal artery.

Every year, I have to get a picture taken.

Not painted, traced with dye.

The dye does not stick, runs out.

Warm when it goes in.

They tell you this, to expect it.

Someone said it’s not about understanding.

It’s about pulse, the rhythm the heart takes to heart.

I tried to paint my feelings. I wanted the colors distinct,

the way a child separates foods on a plate—nothing touching.

The colors ran together.

It was a big brown mess.

I tried to paint what I saw.

The more I looked, the more complicated the forms became.

Alison Hicks was awarded the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Press for Knowing Is a Branching Trail. Previous collections are You Who Took the Boat Out and Kiss, a chapbook Falling Dreams, and a novella Love: A Story of Images. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Gargoyle, Permafrost, and Poet Lore. She was named a finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose prize from Smartish Pace, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern, Quartet Journal, and Nude Bruce Review. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

Editor’s Choice: 2024 Philadelphia Stories Poetry Contest

To read “Oshouo” by Shin Watanabe, click HERE.

Shin Watanabe was born in Gainesville, Florida and has lived in New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Nevada. He studied philosophy at the University of Minnesota and received an MFA in poetry at the University of Las Vegas. Shin is currently a PhD candidate in English with a creative dissertation in poetry at Binghamton University.

Honorable Mention: 2024 Philadelphia Stories Poetry Contest

When Prince sings I Would Die 4 U

I know he’s singing the number 4,

the capital letter U, and I believe

there are things worth dying for.

I can hear their chopped off heads trailing

behind Prince’s motorcycle

waiting for the moment they bounce

together and kiss inside a cloud of exhaust.

His motorcycle is a storm,

a purple nebula flashing

magnetized lighting in the distant reaches

of space, where his light is travelling

still, untouched by death. I would die

for just about anything large enough

to love so easily: Your hair.

The taste of dehydration. The idea of you

towering above the actual me.

Your head mouths a letter

and then an alphabet.

Your head spells a word, rain.

Or was it pain?

Prince is touching down,

one wheel, then the other

kisses the ground. I want to warn him

that it’s too late, ask you

to help me lift him back into the sky

before history catches up,

but I don’t see you anymore.

And it’s not too late. You say

there’s more beyond each beheaded

word, outside the constellations

of hurt. As the elevator doors close

Prince says something about going crazy.

He’s still alive, his motorcycle still dragging

the future behind it like a parade.

Von Wise received his MFA for Creative Writing from Florida International University. He teaches English composition and creative writing in Philadelphia, where he lives.

Honorable Mention: 2024 Philadelphia Stories Contest

Flight

(Dedicated to Carlos from Guatemala who died at the border)

An invisible hand, vice-like,

grips his shoulder…

Head, turning from the light,

he knows the cage has fallen.

He flees from persecution to persecution.

The arduous and angry road north,

long through jungle and desert and mesa

and up to the border of reason before

the breakaway turn

back into the night of sand and moon.

Huddled in the sagebrush of memory and fear,

the boy bites his wrist to stave the ghost of hunger,

too hungry to remember how to eat

or how his mother sang when cooking breakfast.

“Oh little vampire with blood in your teeth,

what energy can you derive from draining your life?”

Looking at the grains beneath his shoes,

he remembers a man named Tyson on the television,

saying as many stars exist…

To visit such a one!

He licks a finger with more blood than spit,

delicately sticking a single grain of sand

near the nail.

Here it is, a glorious star, big enough

to shine a way for him,

a child searching for magi.

There, in the desert night,

a one like the hijo Jesus,

hiding from Herod’s men.

With no strong-armed carpenter to build him a home,

no Madre’ Maria to suckle him in his shivering death.

The cage is everywhere,

infinite in its capacity to stretch and follow,

grabbing the bird-bones of his shoulder,

bidding him to step into the darkness.

Six, seven, eight steps south, now,

are like the breadth of a continent.

How does a cage like this get built?

Who orders its erection?

What is its material?

Everywhere unseen,

it falls like a weighted

drop of rain,

making a sound, but not in any instance to be found

in the desert night.

Moments… and

as great a star as the little bit of silica had become,

it has fallen from the finger,

itself in flight from the cage, to return

to its constellation on the desert floor.

As the keepers of the cage know no shame,

an echo cries, “Uncage the primitive!” but the voice is

a hollow in the scorpion’s den, where the predator remains

sophisticated in his charms.

The boy rubs the empty space at the tip of his finger

and hears the distant notes of his mother’s voice on the night breeze.

He can see her ebony braid swishing rhythmically as she cooks eggs

while he makes a bed in the lightless constellation of ages.

Khalil Elayan is a Senior Lecturer of English at Kennesaw State University, teaching mostly World and African American Literature, and he loves gardening and spending time in nature on his farm in north Georgia. Khalil’s poems have been published in The Black Fork Review, About Place Journal, and The Esthetic Apostle. Khalil has also published creative nonfiction, with his most recent essay appearing in Talking Writing, and his latest short story has shortlisted in The Vincent Brothers Review Annual Short Story Contest.

Runner Up: 2024 Philadelphia Stories Poetry Contest

To read “Tía rebuilds her house as she snores,” click HERE.

Purvi Shah seeds healing through anti-violence advocacy and creating art. Her most recent book, Miracle Marks (Northwestern UP, 2019), investigates gender violence & her prize-winning debut, Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006), plumbs migration and loss. Purvi relishes sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice.

Runner Up: 2024 Philadelphia Stories Poetry Contest

In the boat of the Buick, lake of ice
glinting in front of us like a tarnished mirror—
there in the empty Acme parking lot, my father
tells me: Step on the gas. And there it is
that moment of this-can’t-be-right, but
he nods, winds the window down until a small crack
forms along the edge and slips
the remains of his lit cigarette to skate
orange down the pane. He exhales smoke
from both nostrils and says, Step. On. The. Gas.
As my boot levels pedal to floormat, the tires
begin an almost useless spin—as frictionless
as teenage excuses. A brief catch
as tire grips asphalt and the car guns
forward until he says, Now, stop. He has prepared
me for this, and yet every instinct
tells me no. I freeze then force myself to flick
foot to brake oh how we spin—our DNA stretching out into endlessness,
the double helix pulling so tightly
against itself that it ribbons. Turn against the slide
against it, and I do—back treads gripping nothing, connecting
with nothing, and we sail in glorious squirreling circles
until gravity slows us
and we stop.
And again, his commandment
as he sparks lighter to fresh Carlton,
But this time turn into it—you’ll see, so again I punch foot to gas
then pound the brake, the back of the car flying out
from behind us—the tail turning the fish.
And twisting into that slide, four thousand pounds of Detroit steel
comes under my control, the steering restored, the tires aligned,
and as I pump the breaks softly, as he tells me to do,
as though there is an egg underfoot,
we glide to a stop.

There, in the rare silence that is the snow, cigarette now pinned
between his teeth, my father grins. He flicks ashes
sideways into the waiting mouth of the ashtray—
the yellowed tips of his fingers
stained with nicotine.

Tara A. Elliott’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Cimarron Review, 32 Poems, Ninth Letter, and The Normal School among others. An award-winning educator, she also serves as Executive Director of the Eastern Shore Writers Association (ESWA), and chair of the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference. A former student of Lucille Clifton, she’s been awarded numerous grants and honors for her writing and outreach, including the Christine D. Sarbanes Award from MD Humanities, The Light of Literacy Award from Wicomico County Public Libraries, and a Maryland Arts Council’s Independent Artist Award.

Runner Up: 2024 Philadelphia Stories Poetry Contest

Make Her Dance

After Juicy J

When the ones fall from the sky

we confuse the source of the Rain.

The ass shaking caused a deluge.

As it should be yet the hand is considered

the source. The clouds aren’t even the

source. White science pales in any comparison

forced by Black alchemy. The gold, the

shine, the minerals in deep conversation

but we only see paper. Shiny teeth snag on

the lights, a Diamond in the rough was carbon

first. life Fossilized then consolidated. Some LLC

is paid homage and the rain dancers are

forced to tip out. House money isn’t real. Plantation money

is. The club separates the haves and have nots. Miss recognition

got a smart mouth. All hail the fat ass, the rain bringer,

clapping and winning the battle of the bandz.

Vincente Perez is a poet and scholar working at the intersection of Poetry, Hip-Hop, and digital culture. He is a PhD Candidate in the Performance Studies program and a Poetry and the Senses Fellow at UC Berkeley (2021). His debut poetry chapbook, “Other Stories to Tell Ourselves” is available now (Newfound 2023). Their poems have appeared in Obsidian, Poet Lore, (De)Cypher, Honey Literary, Poetry.onl, and more. www.vincenteperez.com

Winner of the 2024 Philadelphia Stories Poetry Contest

To read “A Song for Anna Mae,” click HERE.

LaVonna Wright is a poet, educator, and artist from Augusta, Georgia. Receiving her MA in English from Georgia Southern University, LaVonna is devoted to a poetic and academic ethos that centers on innovation, equity, & truthtelling. She writes to venerate Black women’s narratives, personal and historical, often bearing witness to the ways in which they have navigated grief, unraveling, and silencing; through her work, LaVonna aims to reaffirm the tenderness that has not been offered to them. You can find her sharing writings in her newsletter, spending time in community, or cooking something slow.