CSPS Poetry Letter No. 1 of 2026 - Spring, Part I: Winners of CSPS Monthly Poetry Contests in 2025

“March of Intellect No. 2” by William Heath (1794 – 1840), Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

In a cartoon made in England in March 1828, entitled “March of Intellect, No. 2,” there are many fantastical aerial machines including some bizarre ones, such as a volcano propelling a flight, but there is not a single shape of a modern airplane with widely outstretched wings and a narrow, elongated body. Our imagination often fails to foreshadow what is truly coming… 

The humble beginnings of aerial flight are mostly associated with balloons, that from scientific wonders devolved into hobbies of afficionados and children’s toys. To illustrate this, the first Poetry Letter of the 250th anniversary year of our great nation, I picked some historical images of balloons, and added my photos from the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is good to know how far we have gone since the humble beginnings of exiles seeking freedom far from their oppressive homelands. Was everything perfect from the start? No. Is everything perfect now? No. Was it worth it to create the world’s first republic, based on “inalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness”? Certainly. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are shining lights for the world… even if having needed a multitude of Amendments.

Here, we present the fruit of poets’ pursuit of creative freedom and happiness: the winners of Monthly Contests of 2025. The  featured poet Nancy Murphy, and reviews of three poetry books will be posted in Part II. Enjoy!

Maja Trochimczyk, CSPS President

A London Street Scene with Six Balloons (1825), Print by George Cruikshank (1792 – 1878). Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

WINNERS OF CSPS MONTHLY POETRY CONTESTS IN 2025

The hard-working, insightful, and sharp-eyed Alice Pero, Monthly Contest Judge, selected the following poems and poets as winner of prizes in our Monthly Contests in 2025.

① January: Nature, Landscape. 

1st Prize: Lorraine Jeffery, “Next Gen Storm Dance”

② February: Love. 

1st Prize: Richard T. Ringley, “Translation”

③ March: Open, Free Subject. 

1st Prize: Jeff Graham, “Winter(')s(')”. 

2nd Prize: David Anderson, “No Breeze”

3rd Prize: Katharyn Howd Machan, “Laura Pearce: Redwing, 1888”

④ April: Mythology, Dreams, Other Universes. 

1st Prize: Katharyn Howd Machan, “Helen”

⑤ May: Personification, Portraits. 

1st Prize: Carla Schick, "What Is Stolen Will Never Be Returned"

⑥ June: The Supernatural. 

1st Prize: Rebecca Clayton ,”If I Were a God”

2nd Prize: Richard Ringley, “Kumi Ho and the Night of the Waning Moon”

⑦ July: Childhood, Memoirs.

1st Prize: John Monagle, “Communion” 

2nd Prize: Lorraine Jeffery, “My Quiet Grandmother”

⑧ August: Places, Poems of Location.

1st Prize: Peter Ludwin, “Terezin Concentration Camp, Bohemia”

2nd Prize: Laura Grevel, “Geodetic Survey Three-Dimensional Changes in Crustal Motion at mm Scale”

3rd Prize: Michael Shoemaker, “The Gift of a Lane”

⑨ September: Colors, Music, Dance.

1st Prize: Katharyn Howd Machan, “During Music”

2nd Prize: Lorraine Jeffery, “Coda” 

3rd Prize: Kathryn Schmeiser, ”A Chance to Dance”

⑩ October: Humor, Satire. 

1st Prize: Katharyn Howd Machan, "People Often Ask"

⑪ November: Family, Friendship, Relationships.

 1st Prize: Bill Glose, “Devotion”

⑫ December: Back Down to Earth (Time, Seasons).

1st Prize: John W. Crawford, "Do Not Go Gentle--A January Morning"

2nd Prize: Katharyn Howd Machan, "We Gather for Bells"

"The National Parachute, or John Bull Conducted to Plenty and Emancipation," 1802, Print by James Gillray (1756-1815), Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

 JANUARY 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

Next Gen Storm Dance (text)

A black curtain drops 

behind the mesa.

 First one    then another 

                  jagged ZZZ

        STREAK.

A dry network flaring

    flashing.

No clouds now,

only dancers.

September swelter,  

a waft of creosote from greasewoods. 

No moccasined toe-heel shuffle,

                             to muffled 

drum beat.

Baggy jeans,

baseball caps on backward.

Frenetic energy flashes

iridescent white T-shirts,

young voices call 

Dougie!

Jerk!

Pop, lock & drop it!

Lean wit it!

    Rock wit it!

  Walk it out!

      Stanky legg!

                Cat daddy!

No rain,

only sweat,

Mesa Hip Hop.   

Lorraine Jeffery, First Prize, January 2025

World's Columbian Exposition, 1893: Chicago, Ill. Smithsonian Institution Archives,

Record Unit 95, Box 61, Folder 11, Image No. SIA_000095_B61_F11_022

FEBRUARY 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

Translation

Ah, mon amie,

I have walked these streets 

naked in thought,

this old city that clings to me 

in cobblestone dreams.

I have gathered the odd expression 

in semi-coherent French:

Mon Francais

 N’est pas tres bon

Je ne sais pas; Ca ne fait rien.

The coffeehouses emote 

such wonderful smells, 

a croissant with cream 

a moment alone.

       This quiet quest 

       is calming me,

is healing and healing…

Ah, come with me.

For in my tight winter coat, 

I have walked these streets, 

more naked than nude - 

thinking of you.

Richard T. Ringley, First Prize, February 2025

MARCH 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

1835 Sampler, Embroidery by Elizabeth Tudor, b. 1822.

Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

       Winter(')s(')

                  Quartet for Four Cellos

White atop haygrey.

    Winter's unpassable.

White atop white.

    Horses long now gone.

Yes, after I had gone.

    No, before my arrival. 

Winter passes to winter.

    White atop white atop.

Distant hoofclick.

    Winter passes t6 winter's passing; 

    winter passes to winters past.

*

Sundays come and go; weeks pass.

    Lambs grown old now. 

    Winter nears winter.

Snowdrift; therefore, I am. 

Woolen sky; therefore, I drift.

Shepherd and shepherded of and by

     glances upon the vast.

Winter greets winter greeted.

    Could it be that I?

*

Fleshliness of snow, chill of blossoms, 

chill of flesh, blossoms of snow.

Days and I grown abruptly older. 

Days and I known only by the days.

Blossoms that mantle the snow as they land

    are too brief for their sakes,

    do not fall for their sakes alone.

*

White fields black with last harvest's stubble. 

White fields white with white of field.

Stutter-step past and as the unseen,

toward as from (and along and across)

a milkfilm of cornea (mine and not,

    yet otherwise).

    Or say, I eye my I's.

White fields green with sleep. 

Adrift, I shift my gaze adrift.

 Jeff Graham, First Prize, March 2025

No Breeze

the sky fades, luminous, cloud-free,                             

beyond the horizon of city trees                                         

on this side of the fence lies leaf litter,                                        

crinkled, curled, dry, colorless 

past the fence, straw-colored grass

no longer lit by the descending sun

fences left in the field no longer visible

birds chirp and settle to a bare rustle

no breeze moves the windchimes

under distant trees, car headlights 

turn and vanish into the dark

the sky loses its pale sheen

the coming night claims it all       

David Anderson, Second Prize, March 2025

Laura Pearce: Redwing, 1888

When the Gypsies came, your grandmother 

made me promise not to go to the woods 

where fires blazed and music played

and dark-eyed women danced in coins. 

She said they'd steal a girl like me 

with golden hair and flower skin

and make me beg in filthy clothes 

and feed me scraps of moldy bread.

But the second night the moon rose yellow 

and full, and lilacs filled the air.

I couldn't stay; silently I slipped 

through the gate, blue shawl a shield 

against my family's eyes. I ran

through the town's spring-heavy streets

to where the Gypsies camped, new green

of trees a canopy of lace.

He saw me first, the fiddler, his bow 

poised in firelight, black hair a curve 

of crow's wing on his brow. I knew 

he knew I'd come to them, to him, 

for music, night, the sound and smell 

of waking earth, brush of pale moths

 at my mouth, cry and ache of strings

stretched taut across old polished wood.

Only fifteen, and such knowledge! Slowly 

I let the blue shawl fall, and slowly

I stepped near as he smiled and played 

the song I had long felt in dream

and never heard and always known.

Slowly I moved; then the tempo quickened,

my feet flickering shadows on ground

dancing, dancing to the Gypsy's touch.

How long? The May stars whirled a course

of new-born constellations, stories

it's taken me years to recall. And after,

he led me to his mother's tent, and spoke. 

She brought a tea of sassafras and mint, 

perhaps, some spice I've yet to taste again, 

and traced her fingers on my palm

and stroked my hair. Both stroked my hair.

What else? I left behind the shawl, 

took home instead a fine-spun scarf

she offered from, a chest. Yes-the same

that's always hung above your bed, 

blue with that single golden coin

sewn in you used to call your star.

Remember, when they try to tell you Gypsies

are no good. Remember, when you dance.

Katharyn Howd Machan, Third Prize, March 2025

“The Balloon 'Buffalo'” D. N. Hatfield, ca. 1875–80, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

Collodion photographic prints on yellow cardboard. Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

APRIL 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

Helen

They say it was my face. No:

let me tell you about marriage. 

Silences and swords, a stone house,

my women whispering around me

dull as bees. For years before he touched 

our doorsill, I dreamt his voice;

the silver gifts he brought were tiny 

mirrors of the girl I'd held inside

too long. Soon I turned willing hands

to weave for him, each thread a piece

of secret song. The peacock blue, the purple

heart of pansies, red a cry of sun

                        

setting over unclimbed hills. I asked                                                           

to go with him. I knew he watched me 

walk across cool tile, my feet in sandals

I yearned to kick away 

so I could run to him unbound

by safe convention. Strange strong guest,

reluctant to offend the man he knew 

I didn't love, whose hospitality

was heartless, rote, a hand that drops 

coins in a beggar's cup without a glance.

One morning when the sun rose white 

and helplessly again I moved to stand

beside him where the swans swim slow, 

he took my hand in his and nodded yes.

All time burst to blossom and I

knew what it was to be the rose.

Swift ships, sting of salty air, my hair 

wrapped around his fingers in the dark:

we could have lived forever in that place 

of travel, seabirds wailing overhead,

the men around us eyeing me like some

pure stolen chance-how could they know?—and my

hopes free as any muscled gleaming fish

leaping higher than those blue and bitter waves.

                                                                               Katharyn Howd Machan, First Prize, April 2025 

                                                                     

“Clayton’s Ascent” paper box celebrating world record 350-mile flight on 9 April 1835 by Richard Clayton who flew from Ohio to Virginia. The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

MAY 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

What Is Stolen Will Never Be Returned

Remember when we swayed

our hips   side to side

in perfect rhythm

so that a piece of circular plastic

moved through an infinite path?

We made it seem so easy

even in memory.

I was only four, not 

the graceful girl

my mother wanted

But I knew how to travel

around the world

with my hips linked to a hula hoop

short strong legs neatly placed

Better than climbing trees

or sneaking out onto a fire escape

to watch the skyline at dusk.

I dropped it 

searching for the next game

   Gone.    The wet weeded lawn

could not have hidden

the hoop’s golden flecks.

I refused 

to imagine how my precious hoop

would look

Severed from my body

Then from a distance I hear

hey boy   where’d

your toy go?

I looked

all around    could they mean 

me?

Running stampedes on cement

a glint of my body

trapped in an endless loop

of stolen goods

Published in Suisun Valley Review, Sprint 2024

Carla Schick, First Prize, May 2025

Balloons at Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 2025 by Maja Trochimczyk

JUNE 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

If I Were a God

The glass is smooth and the water clear.

There’s something simple to be found here.

If I were a god, and the world inside,

I’d soothe the green surface and quiet the tide.

And all that is mottled and of the mind,

the ivy that shakes, makes dryads blind,

I’d rip up the roots and leave breath behind.

The glass is gone and the water free

to run through my fingers and to the sea.

If I were a god, and the world without,

I’d trust it to truth and to turn about.

Rebecca Clayton, First Prize, June 2025

Kumi Ho and the Night 

of the Waning Moon

(A Kumiho is a creature that appears in Korean folktales. The creature is described as a nine-tailed fox. The creature transforms itself into a beautiful woman that seduces men to consume their flesh.)

She wore a cross of gold

that fell between her craggy breasts

and when they started to disrobe, she thought:

It’s for the best

She laid upon a mat

then raised her legs into the air.

He slipped into an Asian dream. She stroked

her long dark hair.

She turned her head to weep

as the moon waned and darkness grew.

She whispered, “Please forgive me now for what

I need to do.”

She held him tight and fell

confusion seeped upon his face

She felt the weight of flesh and doubt dissolved

without a trace.

Soon it began to rain

on dusty roads and dusty men.

And when his ghost had disappeared, she felt

at ease again.

Richart T. Ringley, Second Prize, June 2025

JULY 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

Communion

Mother lifts me to her shoulder

and follows the man to the aisle.

All the big people around us move

forward in slow separate lines.

A few big people sit.

Others kneel. All are silent.

I look where mother is facing.

A bigger,older man in a multi-color robe

stands between two boys dressed in white.

As both lines approach them,

the older man places

a thing white treat on their tongues,

which they receive, walk to the side

in opposite directions. With the same hand,

each touches the top of their heads,

descends to the belly, then one shoulder

before crossing to the other.

I turn around and smile

at the smiling woman behind us.

Mother gets close enough for me to hear

the man in the robe say something.

Each person in line responds in kind

before the treat is placed on the tongue.

The man makes the same sounds

to my mother who has the same response.

She closes her eyes. The treat

placed on her tongue must be really tasty.

With the same hand as others,

she touches her brow, her belly,

the shoulder on which I’m resting

before the other.

Then she turns and walks away.

I reach for the treat

getting further beyond my grasp.

John Monagle, First Prize, July 2025

 

My Quiet Grandmother

They were one—

the kitchen, my grandmother

and the black wood stove.

A kitchen thick with browning butter

and silence.

No opinions in an

opinionated family.

No anger, no hateful stares

no scathing words

but—

no spontaneous laughter

Her eyes smiled at children

and grandchildren

and she lied once about who broke

the door on the black oven.

“I did it,” she said to 

protect her young daughter

from his wrath. 

This woman of work—

who was she?

Why so parsimonious

with her smiles and laughter?

Did she have her own

hopes and dreams?

Did she reheat the remains

of her wishes on

the stove of her soul?

My grandmother, the stove

and the kitchen.

She died at fifty one.

Was her life left lingering

in the ashes?

Lorraine Jeffery, Second Prize, July 2025

AUGUST 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

Terezin Concentration Camp, Bohemia

Near the railway spur

bones still cry for water.

And the ashes?

Who can say what roots they nourish,

what borders they have crossed?

Here the ship never sails,

the shawl cannot cover.

Tell me silence isn’t the loudest voice.

When the open mouth forgets itself,

the straw man drinks his shadow.

And the moon?

Gracing a wanted poster,

an impossible price on its head.

Coal-faced, it shuns the cattle cars

rolling east on tracks of tallow.

Absence. Isn’t that the surest

footprint of a crime?

The song the mockingbird teaches its young?

This rain grazes the skin like rust.

Peter Ludwin, First Prize, August 2025

Ludwin poem was published in The Raven Chronicles

 (2010) and in Rumors of Fallible Gods

Geodetic Survey Three-Dimensional Changes

 in Crustal Motion at mm Scale

My first country is the size of a grain of sand, the size of a ticking minute, the size of a clicking trigger, the size of a tadpole kicking, the size of the little blue pond in the garden where a blackbird drinks. My first country is also the size of the Milky Way in a West Texas night, the size of a cicada's exoskeleton clinging to a live oak branch, the size of the Grand Canyon's pink and orange hide, the size and the sighs of a three-day Certified Public Accountaney Exam. My first country is on certain days the size of the Longhorns Marching Band performing Crazy Orange Bread in the University of Texas Football Stadium, the size of a trumpet spitting, the size of the football just kicked, the size of eleven Black football players on their knees in protest, the size of twenty-two law students playing frisbee at Harvard Law School, the size of a book called Catch-22, the size of high-rise glass office buildings where people stare out and want to go down.

My first country is the size of an incredibly sour wild Mustang grape hanging over Waller Creek, the size of the first Whole Foods Grocery down on Lamar Boulevard packed with shoppers and a mariachi band, the size of the little red Mountain Laurel bean that we rubbed on the hot concrete and then burned each other's legs with when we were eight, the size of fresh tamales at Christmas, the size of a ram after drought, the size of a million acres burning in wildfires, the size of a bluebonnet meadow blooming after rain, the size of my grandfather's booming voice saying, "We got an inch of rain. It's beautiful!"

My first country is also the size of a baby's laugh, the size of a gunshot, the size of a women's peace march, the size of a coffin. The size of 100,000 coffins marching down the road to protest gun deaths. My first country is the size of the 1960s, of a race riot where a youth named Cisco slapped a school bus with a big chain, the size of children's screams, the size of an Armadillo World Headquarters' rock concert, the size of Willy Nelson and Eddy Ramone and Led Belly on stage together, the size of a 1975 bright red fire engine truck, the size of a hurricane named Elva that lifted houses and set them down with cows inside, the size of a child riding downhill with no hands on the handlebars.

My first country is even the size of a front porch with two old lady best friends chatting, the size of an attic on a broiling day with eight children discovering a nest of new-born mice nicely pink, the size of a cockroach on your face, the size of a UFO at a campout that bursts into sight, turns a corner and disappears.

My first country is the size of me.                                                                       

                       Laura Grevel, Second Prize, August 2025

The Gift of a Lane

In Lyme Regis, UK, lies a lane of no remark

a shortcut, a get around, a no-honk, no-horn walk away

to meet and chat with fellow neighbors

and friends from around the world.

Sherborne Lane has a giving nature

where children play and run alongside 

the River Lim to the stone-studded sea

chasing chanting seagulls.

Steepled in fragrant, flowered descent

lovely, demure, narrow, intimate as a whisper, 

it is where in Saxon times

pack horses plodded with a heavy load

and slowly yielded 

to salt processing and fishing nets.

Holiday cottages are waiting, to let 

submersed in wonder and purple breeze wisteria.

Michael Shoemaker, Third Prize, August 2025

SEPTEMBER 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

       During Music

Find the blue balloon. 

Find it rising into a sky

the very same blue, a blue

that makes the blue balloon

hard to see, hard to find.

Let your mind

become a woman dressed in white—

old-fashioned, from long ago—

standing at the end of a path

with a basket in her hand.

Watch her stand

as though looking to give flowers

to the next lone traveler

who gently comes her way.

Say nothing.

Simply, step by step,

approach her open smile.

While you walk,

while you find her eyes,

remember that blue sky.

               Why are you here at all?

Give your name,

the secret one a bad person

once told you not to share.

Dare accept

a blossom full and bright.

Light will lengthen

as the woman nods and says

her name, the one

you heard whispered

from the blue balloon.

Soon you and she

will both gaze up,

recite a poem,

and watch it climbing high.

       Katharyn Howd Machan, First Prize, September 2025

 

Coda

Music begins in water

an overture to petrichor

the rondo arriving in a soft drizzle

an allegro patter of rain on leaves.

A vibrato creek

burbling its way

over slick pebbles

and down to

the waterfall's

glissando an

atonal ballad

cascading to

the symphonic river

sloshing the banks

with vibrato

on its way to

the oceans

that sing the world's lullabies

in the rustic lilt of seafoam.

Old hushless drums a pulsating song as

treble waves seek a shore

over the bass harmony

of hallelujah choruses.

Lorraine Jeffery, Second Prize, September 2025

 

A Chance to Dance

 

I drift on the beach, faster 

than a morning stroll, almost

dance with a solitary

sandpiper before wings

spread, legs push away

from warmed grains.  Still

there, I search not for

shells, broken or whole

but for dreams tucked

in algae clumps, a splayed

white feather, broken bits

of smooth edged blue

glass.  I hum with waves,

toes lifting from sand, feet

moving to the beat of water

clapping hands with ebbs

and flows.  I dance

alone with the sea,

a feather blowing

on my hat.  I glide,

 a bird whirling

    legs circling

        feet rising

            arms rounding

The sea grasps my hand

Kathryn Schmeiser, Third Prize, September 2025

OCTOBER 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

People Often Ask

Look into a crystal of Iceland spar 

and you can see the secret 

of the trilobite’s vision..

~  Richard Fortey

Are trilobites still alive today?

They wear wellies even when it isn't raining. They use 

burnbershoots. Broken ones.

What killed the trilobites?

When is the last time

you ate uncooked frozen pizza?

Are trilobites extinct?

Extinct but not a failure.

Most achieve perfect scores on standardized tests 

even when they've lost their glasses.

Are trilobite fossils rare?

Keep looking: dragons turned them into jewelry even though they 

are not gold.

Are trilobites dangerous?

Imagine a bartender at 2 a.m. when you have no 

money to pay.

Can trilobites swim?

Bikinis---polka dot, of course.

Or naked if the wind at dawn is soft.

Who can love a trilobite?

No one--unless your name is Winifred

or, sometimes, maybe George.

Katharyn Howd Machan, First Prize, October 2025

NOVEMBER 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

Devotion

Dawn is kneeling

in the garden, as if

praying the deer

will allow daylilies

and Indian hawthorn

to bloom in full

before gnawing

down to their stems.

Above her head,

a dance of butterflies

wobbles like a halo.

How could I not think

about grace?

I’m still standing by

the sliding door with

a coffee mug in hand

when she comes

back to the house,

steps tentative

on uneven ground

as she leans heavily

on her cane, face

and arms smeared

with streaks of dirt,

gloves gripped

in one hand

like a prize

she’s just won.

Bill Glose,  First Prize, November 2025

DECEMBER 2025 MONTHLY CONTEST

Do Not Go Gentle—A January Morning

It was the coldest night of winter—

eighteen degrees at six that morning.

Some of the past days had been balmy

and many days had seen heavy rains,

the wettest late fall on record for years.

Some flowers in fact had budded out of season.

An azalea bloom, one purple petunia blossom,

and some red begonias were hanging on one by one

reaching for the sun for one more burst of energy.

Two mornings before the ultra cold spell

I noticed the wild running-rose bush by the front gate

showing three new small red buds, brimming with life.

Next day, they were all in bloom

and on the morning of the death-making cold

they were still there, clinging on in the intense weather

like an unsuspecting victim, breathing its last breath.

There they stood in the bright morning sun—a glowing red trinity—

three red roses, defying the odds, surrounded by

drooping green stems and rusty brown leaves,

screaming with life, making a mockery of dormant winter,

saying to the world, as Dylan had said long before,

“Do not go gentle into that dark night.”

John W. Crawford, First Prize, December 2025

We Gather for Bells

Dark days, long nights: yet light

happens among us with red candles

and music rising from pull and pause

to praise the pulse we carry within

as we brave season’s weight. Solstice!

Let us embrace the peaceful place

of roots at rest, of seeds asleep,

of ice a sure and steady promise

as we wait for new birth. Dance

I offer and urge to all

who fear that winter kills and stills: 

find full rhythm in body’s joy

to be alive as clappers clang,

brass and bronze, silver

sending the boldest, brightest song

to call our hands and hips to move

in celebration of our thanks

for sloping valleys, snow-deep hills.

Published in Abandoned Mine

Katharyn Howd Machan, Second Prize, December 2025