Thanks so much to everyone who submitted to the Kakalak 2023 poetry and art contests. Welcome new contributors—36 percent of our submissions—and welcome back contributors from years past. We received nearly 650 poems and 200 artworks. With so much quality work submitted, you definitely made it hard for the judges to choose!
Thank you, Co-editors Kimberlyn Blum-Hyclak, Angelo Geter, and David E. Poston. I greatly value the time and effort you devoted to studying the poetry and art before selecting this year’s winners and contributors.
NOTE: While I make every effort to ensure your name and piece are spelled correctly, mistakes still creep in.
Please email me if anything is amiss.
And now, I am honored to announce this year’s line-up!
Anne M. Kaylor, Executive Editor and Publisher
Kakalak 2023 Poets and Artists
Kakalak 2023 ART AWARD WINNERS:
First Place: Susan G. Williams, The Lowly King of Birds
Second Place: Trish Klenow, Night Swamp
Third Place: Marty Pitcairn, Intent
Cover & Honorable Mention: Jessica Mae Nisbett, Ethereal Forest
Honorable Mention: Trish Sheppard, Glass Menagerie
Honorable Mention: Les Brown, Agate Slices
KAKALAK 2023 POETRY AWARD WINNERS:
First Place: Lucinda Trew, “eve knee-deep in kumquats in the garden of temptation”
Second Place: Karen Luke Jackson, “Plenty”
Third Place: J.S. Absher, “Vermeer’s The Little Street, 1657–1995”
Honorable Mention: Rebecca Baggett, “American Fear”
Honorable Mention: John Desjarlais, “Welcome to the Neighborhood”
Honorable Mention: Paige Gilchrist, “Duck Hunting, Northern Minnesota”
ART SELECTED FOR PUBLICATION IN KAKALAK 2023:
Catherine Altice, Self Drawn
Joyce Compton Brown, Freddy’s Barn
Les Brown, Fiddle
Candace J. Carter, Goblin Valley State Park
Julie Ann Cook, Ways of Water
Debra A. Daniel, Watercolor Worlds
Judith A. Davis, Chipping Sparrow
Michael A. Dorsey, The Cure
Nadine Ellsworth-Moran, Fireworks
Lynn Farmer, Drying the Clothes
Chrystal A. Ingersoll, Café 220
Patricia Ann Joslin, Jasper Reflections
Trish Klenow, Night Scene
Megan J. Ledgerwood, Where the Wild Things Are
Terri McCord, Patterned Bold Flower
Jack McGregor, Saluda Sky
Rachel Nelson, Geoecomorphology
Arlene Oraby, Grazing the Range
Marty Pitcairn, Board Shaper’s Eye
Cristiana Rioli, Circle of Life
Peggy Waters Rowland, Marsh Bird
T. Parker Sanborn, Matutinal
Martin Settle, Monarch Caterpillars
Trish Sheppard, Vessel of Glass
H.R. Spencer, Lilies at Biltmore
Britnie Walston, Mother Nature
Emily Wang, August
Susan G. Williams, Hey, Hurry Up Down There
Lee Zacharias, Where the Rocky Mountains Meet the Plains
POETRY SELECTED FOR PUBLICATION IN KAKALAK 2023:
J.S. Absher, “Night Action”
Kathy Ackerman, “Making Walking Sticks with My Father After My Mother’s Diagnosis”
Martha O. Adams, “Under”
Pam Baggett, “Second Birthday Without You”
Rebecca Baggett, “The Joy of Getting It Right”
Bruce H. Bailey, “Coffee Shop”
Richard Band, “At Play”
Joan Barasovska, “Simple Subtraction”
Jenny Bates, “Pointers for an Early Spring and Berry Picking”
Libby Bernardin, “The Golden Splendor”
Al Black, “Recurring Dream”
Teresa McLamb Blackmon, “I Live in a Small Town”
Brook Blaylock, “Lullaby: Requiem for a Grandmother Who Did Not Hug”
Ann Herlong Bodman, “He Knew Little About Red Clay”
Jim Bogue, “Jerry Isn’t Here Anymore”
Katie Ellen Bowers, “pollen a sufficient god”
Kevin Boyle, “Wailing for Two”
Joyce Compton Brown, “Ghazal for an Unknown Father”
Les Brown, “Dark Crevasse”
Kathleen Calby, “Emanations of the Flower of Life”
Bill Caldwell, “Greenup County, Kentucky”
Barbara Campbell, “The Lost Sister”
Paloma A. Capanna, “Tribe of the Raggedy”
Catherine Carter, “Raspberries & Dust”
Mark Caskie, “Over Waves and Troughs”
S.L. Cockerille, “The Question Was, On a Scale of One to Ten”
“Joy Colter, “The Undone Status of Abortion”
Julie Ann Cook, “Pentecost”
Beth Copeland, “Blood Moon”
Caroline Cottom, “habitat xxx”
Anne Cowie, “Rhubarb”
Susan M. Craig, “Blood Sisters”
Steve Cushman, “On Spotting My Dead Father at the Harris Teeter Seafood Counter”
Debra A. Daniel, “Vulnerable Dangle of Upside-down Boy”
Christine Salkin Davis, “Elegy for America”
Narya Deckard, “Learning to Speak Horse”
John Desjarlais, “Mom Ironed Shirts”
David R. Dixon, “Mercy”
Mary Alice Dixon, “Prayer Walker’s Tongue”
Deborah H. Doolittle, “Marty Silverthorne Walking into April’s Flowers”
M. Scott Douglass, “Rust to Dust”
Morrow Dowdle, “Bellevue Mill”
Sandra Dreis, “Dry Docked”
Marcel A. Duclos, “A Poem Rises”
Sue Weaver Dunlap, “Front Parlor 1959”
Lisa Dunn, “Nature Has Her Way”
Marjorie Dybec, “Baptism in the Flood”
Ralph Earle, “Falaise d’Aval”
Nadine Ellsworth-Moran, “Chapter 3, Song of Songs, On How to Write a Love Dream”
Terri Kirby Erickson, “Carolina Circle”
Adriana Estill, “Shadows of Salt”
Lynn Farmer, “Listening to Mahler’s No. 8”
Jason T. Ford, “288 Lee Street”
Joanne Kennedy Frazer, “a doomed dialogue”
Annette Gagliardi, “Lost Seeds”
Regina YC Garcia, “Black Blues Gone”
Michael Gaspeny, “Shedding Regalia”
Kristin Gifford, “When You Find My Body”
Ed Gold, “Fugue for the First Grandchild”
Ginger Graziano, “Flight”
Terri Greco, “Billy Collins Recovers a Memory from the Silver Nugget Casino”
Anne Waters Green, “Mortality”
Bill Griffin, “Jumble”
N.G. Haiduck, “Change”
Cordelia M. Hanemann, “Take and Drink”
Janis Harrington, “The Hospice Hosts an Art Exhibit”
Peggy W. Heitmann, “Maggie Mae Gibbons Brown, Died 1928”
Mary Hennessy, “Occupied Japan”
Jo Ann Hoffman, “This Is My Undoing”
Irene Blair Honeycutt, “Salt”
Earl Carlton Huband, “An Incomplete History of a Storied Work”
Karen Luke Jackson, “So certain, the doctors”
Steph Jeffries, “Remembering Mary Oliver”
K.L. Johnston, “Dusk at Horn Creek Church 1979”
Paul Jones, “The Hive in the Wall”
Kelly Jones, “Lost Winter”
Patricia Ann Joslin, “Communing with the Turkey Vultures in Tecate, Mexico”
Jeanne Julian, “A Watercolor by Katherine Nash Knox”
Caroline Kane Kenna, “The Moon Follows the Sun”
Eugene Kusterer, “Victory Garden”
Gregory Lobas, “Moon-child”
Kathryn Etters Lovatt, “Hide and Seek”
Gina Malone, “From the Family Album of Star-crossed Lovers”
Sandra Marshburn, “Terror”
Mary E. Martin, “A Bunch of Killers”
Preston Martin, “Fox Moves in Nearby”
Nancy Martin-Young, “The World’s Most Elegantly Wasted Human Being”
Katherine H. Maynard, “Packing”
Terri McCord, “It Is 7:00 p.m. in Afghanistan”
Jean McKinney, “The Flame Sinks”
Marjorie Schratz McNamara, “Pinky-swear”
Lynda Rush Myers, “Maybe This Is Where I Come From But My Children Must Think on These Things”
Ruth Nicholson, “Butter-and-Eggs”
Gail Peck, “My Mother’s Last Days”
Gary Phillips, “How to Survive as a Latinx Organizer in North Carolina”
Fred Pond, “November Ruins”
Gary V. Powell, “Deployed”
David Radavich, “50th Class Reunion”
Judith Cummings Reese, “Friends’ Meeting”
Amanda Rhodes, “It Hurts to Love Her”
Cindy Rickey, “North Carolina Shine”
Hannah Ringler, “Autumnal Asymptote”
Lucia Walton Robinson, “Forever a Semicolon”
Betty Ritz Rogers, “Neighborhood Walk”
Susan Rothlein, “The Surprise”
Marilyn Keith Rousseau, “Things Left Buried in the Hungryland Slough”
Leslie M. Rupracht, “Annual Mammogram”
T. Parker Sanborn, “Among the Pines”
Eric Sbarge, “Covenants”
Roberta Schultz, ”Tlingit Drum”
Jane Seitel, “A Woman’s Cento”
Martin Settle, “The Old Reading Room”
Bobbie Jean Shepard, “Don’t Call Me Girl”
Jane Shlensky, “Accountable”
Sherry Siddall, “Father, 2023”
Michael Simpson, “Listening to the ‘Red Tarn’ Waltz”
Kashiana Singh, “Epidemiology of Pain”
Jane Bowman Smith, “Tell Me Your Names”
Susan Willey Spalt, “The Old Woman”
H.R. Spencer, “Come Morning”
Jenny Van Stone, “Breaking Up with Charlotte”
Caren Stuart, “Not About Weather or Onions or the Poem You Wrote Twenty-four Years Ago Today”
Brian Tajlili, “Wake-Chatham County Line”
Lynne Santy Tanner, “Garfield, Georgia, 1945: An Answer to Maurice Manning”
Richard Allen Taylor, “Planning Your Trip to the Geographic Center of the USA”
Melinda Thomsen, “Dropping Sunrises in a Jar”
Betsy Thorne, “Worried”
Lucinda Trew, “all the words swallowed by girls”
Rob Vance, “Individual Medley”
Mark Vogel, “The Skin of Great Aunts”
Priscilla Webster-Williams, “The Sexton”
Eric Weil, “Probably Not Writing About Water Aerobics”
Jennifer Weiss, “Slather”
Louise Gwathmey Weld, “this old barn”
Liza Wolff-Francis, “Question: What Are Your Many Callings?”
Nancy Harmon Womack, “Yet Again, Ukraine”
John Thomas York, “Most of His life, Dad Got Up Before Dawn”
Congratulations to all!