First Prize:
That Boy
Syria, 2006. (The Syrian Civil War lasted from 2011 to 2024.)
A January day of empty roads and olive groves,
of towns with names like Homs and Hama,
and a Castle on an emerald hill, where a boy
in a too-small anorak was hiding out of sight.
A day too green for the time of year, too full
of ghosts for anyone to enter lightly. Yet
he was there, alone inside the one-time chapel
of the Krak des Chevaliers, waiting for us,
sensing our confusion; before he crossed
to the south wall, turned to face chill stone –
and broke the silence with a rising flare
of notes. Colours with no name, no home.
Just a child on an average afternoon, who didn’t
choose his place of birth and couldn’t know
what was to come. He had something
to offer, and visitors he was able to halt
with a startling game of dare that sparked
the vaulted darkness in the heart of an ancient
crusader fortress. Then he quietly gathered
his fist-full of coins – as if he had sold us
a cheap souvenir or a cornet of almonds –
and vanished down the hill, into his future.
That boy, with a voice like a timeless, timely bell,
who’d called the Dead to prayer.
Elsa Braekkan Payne
Second Prize:
She Watches for the First Swallow
and recalls him talking about the myth:
how people once thought swallows slept
at the bottom of ponds and rivers all winter.
As the days grew cooler, they saw them
gather by water, skimming the pond,
as if preparing to dive into the reflected sky.
Now he’s gone, she considers their bones,
how they’d float, imagines them swallowing
stones to help them sink into darkness,
pictures them piercing the surface, a rain
of midnight-blue wings, fine bubbles rising,
as the last warm breath leaves their lungs
and they plunge into deep green shadows,
silt swirling, settling, as their feet touch
cold mud and they nestle down to sleep.
Month pass, ice prickles overhead,
they grow waterlogged, embedded
in sediment, heartbeats as slow as falling
feathers, then wake in spring, limbs stiff,
bodies weak, and dig themselves out, rise –
wings creaking, pale light filtering
through the water – to take a first breath,
pick insects from the surface, abdomens
popping, membranes dissolving
on their tongues. Warmed by the sun,
they shake the last drops from their feathers
and launch up into the dazzling sky –
like the bird curving over the meadow
towards her, circling the barn,
trailing long tail streamers and singing.
Thea Smiley​
Third Prize
​Listening In
I read somewhere
that the unborn hear everything
as downpours breaking on a river,
tilting on a watered axis,
our voices bent
through muscle and blood.
How strange we must sound,
your father and I—
two distant gods
leaning into your dark orchard,
our voices shaken loose,
petals steeped in calmer waters
drifting towards you.
He speaks:
it gathers in you like wintered metal,
a slow bell buried under ice,
tolling without air.
I answer:
a brightness that cannot hold,
a spill of white insects in your red night.
Do you think we are constant?
Do you think we are kind?
Already we are altered
by the act of reaching you,
gathering us as figures
of impossible scale:
your first gods
vast and unknowable,
trying to listen in.
Natalie Ann Holborow