“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

                    INAUGURAL POETRY CHALLENGE WINNER

                    Definitions I Prefer

                    meas·ure:
                    a photographer,
                    his mistress.

                    touch:
                    two sleeping strangers,
                    a Greyhound bus.

                    pre·ma·ture birth:
                    a poet,
                    mother’s coffin.

                    time·less·ness:
                    chameleons,
                    a branch.

                    soothe:
                    aloe,
                    summer home.

                    hun·ger:
                    swirling fork,
                    empty plate.

                    pres·ence:
                    hurricane,
                    twelve dead.

                    song:
                    cobbled roads,
                    lover’s cart.

                    ho·li·ness:
                    morning fog,
                    reindeer antler.

                    weak·ness:
                    bodybuilder,
                    unshared bed.

                    tone:
                    wood,
                    pressed ear.

Poem written by www.yesorotherwise.tumblr.com

Selected by poet Allen Braden as the Inaugural Poetry Challenge Winner

Judge’s comment: “‘Definitions I Prefer’ was chosen for its innovation in taking a kind of list we are all familiar with (dictionary entries) and re-envisioning it into the form of a catalog, or list, poem. This poem also practices William Carlos Williams’ advice ‘No ideas but in things,’ what Samuel Taylor Coleridge warned against—‘the danger of thinking without images.’”

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