Fiction:

“Chocolate Spider Web”— Luke Hawley

“The Pink Pack” — Susan E. Tornga

“Love Letter” — Michael Turner

Honorable Mentions:  “Men and Smokes” by Jennifer Annessi and “The Point Of No Return” by Elizabeth Benton

Poetry:

“Midwife Man” — Ellen LaFleche

“Traveling People Part I — Dissociative Blues” — Robert McMullen

“Terminal Opera” — Finley Ballard Evans

Honorable Mentions: “Plastic Woman”  by Mindy Gars Dolandis and “Greyhound to Nowhere” by Barb McMakin

Judges:

Fiction contest judge Sophie Childs is a married, full-time mother of four who has been writing for as long as she can remember.  She graduated from Oxford in 1995, having studied modern history, and has published various non-fiction articles exploring various aspects of folklore and mythology as well as a book.  She still holds out hope that one day she will be a children’s fiction author. She is the owner and founder of Fey Publishing. 

Poetry contest judge Amy M. Levy rediscovered writing after believing for nearly twenty years the teacher who said her prose lacked passion and emotion. Now, she can’t seem to stop. She maintains a creative blog at amylevy.com, journals her personal life at several sites, and even allows her work to be published. Amy shares her Northern Virginia home with her husband and their dogs.   

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“Whoever invented almond bark is a genius.”  The microwave beeps and my sister grabs two oven mitts off the counter.  She stabs the door latch on the microwave, and the door springs open.  She reaches into the microwave and pulls out a glass measuring bowl full of melted brown chocolate.

“Seriously. Genius.”   

She carries the bowl across the kitchen to the far counter.  A sheet of wax paper has been laid out across the Formica.  She sets the bowl on the counter and opens the cupboard overhead.  It is full of sugar.  White sugar, raw sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar.  Other sweet things, too.  Chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, cherry chips, chocolate chunks, vanilla chips, a bag of M&Ms, assorted colors of sprinkles.

I walk to the refrigerator and open the door.  A half gallon of milk.  A package of juice boxes for my niece.  Ketchup, ranch dressing, Worcester sauce.  Diet soda.  Diet Coke, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Mountain Dew.  I push the cans to the side of the fridge, searching for something with real sugar, something that would come out of my sister’s cabinets.  I spy a dark can of something at the rear of the fridge and pull it past all the diets.  Coke Zero.  I crack the lid.  It will have to do.

I watch my sister dump a bag of Gummi Bears into the dark brown liquid. She stirs the concoction with a wooden spoon.  She is blinking more than usual, tensing the muscles around her eyes.  I think about warning her about crow’s feet, but save it for our mother.

“I don’t know how you do it.”

She looks up from her stirring.  “Do what?”

“Run marathons on sugar and diet soda.”  I make sure to follow my statement with a wide smile, keeping my lips closed and scrunching the corners of my eyes in an opposite way than what she is doing.

“I do not!”  She laughs, and I believe her.  It’s nice to hear her laugh so loud.  It is our way, to laugh loudly.  We are all a little deaf from listening to my mom laugh on the phone.

“You do. It’s not a criticism.”  I make this clear.  I am learning to listen to subtext and make my intentions clear.  “I’m impressed.  I can’t even run three miles, and I basically eat potatoes.”  I think about Christmas dinner tomorrow at Mom and Dad’s and the heaping portions of mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole.

Her laugh trails off to a sigh.  She is gone again, crinkling her eyes, grinding her teeth, pulling Gummi Bears out of the mixing bowl with a spoon, laying them out on the wax paper.  I dip my hand back into a bowl full of chocolaty pretzels.

“Wait!  Take a break from those pretzels and try this.”  She grabs a red Christmas tin, with a large evergreen on the front.  I think how strange it is that evergreens don’t lose their leaves.  I have lived in the North all my life.  Winter would be an awful black and white if evergreens lost their needles and couldn’t break up the horizon with their deep greens.

I open the tin and remove what looks like a ball of chocolate.  My sister waits, half of her bears still drowning in chocolate, watching me.  Her eyes are a little unnerving.  Her face is tense with excitement, but her eyes remain heavy and still.  I make a mental note to kill my brother-in-law. 

]]> https://www.wildviolet.net/2011/05/30/chocolate-spiderweb/feed/ 0 https://www.wildviolet.net/2011/05/30/the-pink-pack/ https://www.wildviolet.net/2011/05/30/the-pink-pack/#comments Mon, 30 May 2011 13:54:00 +0000 http://www.wildviolet.net/?p=1358

She clung to the backpack as if she could not endure the separation that strapping it across her back would entail.  Stick-thin arms encircled the neon pink bundle with such force that I thought the contents would erupt like lava from a caldera.

My daughter — my heart knots at the word — was four years and three months old the day I met her, and I’m ashamed to admit that her pack was what the first thing I noticed, not the satiny tresses that cascaded in a black waterfall over her shoulders, or those enormous onyx eyes. I had yet to discover that one tiny scarlet shoe was missing a strap and that she wore only one sock. 

“Amy Grace, I’m your new mommy.” 

The words were swallowed by my sobs, making my open-armed approach anything but reassuring.  She hid behind her foster mother’s legs much as a playful child might seek refuge behind a tree.  Amy Grace was not playing.  She gripped the pink pack even tighter, knuckles whitening against her dark skin. The psychedelic green kittens that danced across the pink background seemed to morph from playful to macabre with the pressure of Amy Grace’s vise grip.

I looked at the woman-cum-tree trunk, contorting my face in a plea for assistance.  Sarah Pennington, foster mother to Amy Grace Edmunds for the past six months, was fighting tears of her own.  Amy Grace, however, did not cry.  Instead, she peered at me, unblinking, from behind her fortress.

The Denver Police Department had signed my paychecks for almost twenty years.  The first fifteen, I was a street cop, mostly on the night shift.  Five years previously, I decided, with a total lack of rational thinking, to transfer to a desk job.  My sleep-deprived brain figured that I would be more attractive to men if I was: a) available for evening dates and other such interesting entertainment and b) out of uniform, with no gun at my hip.  So, I began pushing press releases across a metal desk and stepping up to a microphone every couple of days to assure the citizens of Denver that the DPD had the — pick one: robbery, murder, kidnapping, hit-and-run — well under control and was focusing extra manpower on the crime.  I became a talking head.

Like many things in life, however, the change did not work out as planned.  Prospects for a husband looked grim, and, anyway, I’d already had one of those and was in no hurry to repeat that disaster.  What I hadn’t had was a baby, and at 40, time was running out.  I decided to adopt a child.   

The Internet, cyberspace’s big-bang explosion of technology and information, is both a blessing and a curse.  Before I knew it, there were half a hundred adoption Web sites saved in My Favorites.  Some encouraged me; many more depressed me.   It wasn’t just my age (borderline old), my health (breast cancer survivor — albeit of ten years) or my income (adoptions are expensive… very expensive).  Web site after Web site rained negative information down on me.  Adoptable children were few, babies almost non-existent.  Unless I wanted to draw Social Security and lead a scout troop in the same year, I couldn’t expect to specify age, sex or ethnic origin.  By the way, the agencies admonished, send a check, with lots of zeroes.

Patience had never been one of my strengths, but I was determined to see this though.  I persevered through two years of medical exams, psychiatric evaluations and Nosy Parkers sifting through my financial records.  The mountains of adoption paperwork put the IRS to shame.

]]> https://www.wildviolet.net/2011/05/30/the-pink-pack/feed/ 0 https://www.wildviolet.net/2011/05/30/love-letter/ https://www.wildviolet.net/2011/05/30/love-letter/#comments Mon, 30 May 2011 13:50:57 +0000 http://www.wildviolet.net/?p=1375

The first time we went to the carnival I got so scared on the Ferris wheel that I pissed my pants.  I know exactly when it happened.  They speed up the wheel just as it’s entering its final spin.  I had put on a brave face until then, refusing to tell you that I’m afraid of heights.  I wanted to impress you.  First date.  When we got off the ride, you stepped off in front of me, and I walked closely behind you, arms thrown over your shoulders, careful not to let my crotch touch you.  When we turned a corner and were away from people, I spun you around with both hands.  Looking into your eyes made you think I wanted a kiss.  I saw them close ever so slightly in anticipation.  “I pissed myself.”  You looked down at my pants and laughed hysterically.  You finally stopped laughing.  I tried to rub the red from my cheeks.  We snuck to the car and you took me home.  I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again.

“I can drive.”  You snatched the keys from my hand and jaunted to the driver’s side door.  I had doubts but You’ve done it before I thought to myself.  I could tell you were drunk.  Your voice gets playful and childlike and you smile even bigger than usual.  But, the ride was smooth. We talked a little. We laughed a lot.  You turned onto the highway and stopped just beyond the yield sign. 

“Are you okay?”

“I got it!”  We get on the highway safely, despite the glares of the women you nearly cut off.  We talk a little.  We laugh a lot.  You go quiet.  The sun shines through the roof.  I smile.  Another day, another dollar.  Our truck veers slightly to the right.  I look at you with a curious grin.  You smile back.  We ride smoothly for another half mile.  The truck veers gently to the left.  I look again.  This time… a little less grin. 

“I can drive.”

“I got it!”  We ride smooth.  The car veers toward the median.  I look over.  You’re leaning on the door, hands still on the wheel.  You sit up and wipe your mouth.  I grab the wheel to steady it. 

“Did you drink after the cough pill?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“That may be important to know.” 

“I don’t know.”

“Pull over!” 

“No!” 

“Pull over _____________!” 

You slap my hands.  “No!”  Two minutes later we were off the highway and sitting in the yard of a strange house.  “Thank God nobody’s home.”  You stagger around the car, balancing yourself with one hand pressed against it.  “I think you should drive.”  I took the keys and held the passenger door open for you.  You sat down facing me, feet out the car.  I smiled.  You smiled.  We talked a little.  We laughed a lot.  I got in the car, gently pulled out of the yard, careful to avoid a garden gnome, and took us home.

]]> https://www.wildviolet.net/2011/05/30/love-letter/feed/ 0 https://www.wildviolet.net/2011/05/30/midwife-man/ https://www.wildviolet.net/2011/05/30/midwife-man/#comments Mon, 30 May 2011 13:48:47 +0000 http://www.wildviolet.net/?p=1371

Julia wants to die in the hot tub
but the fool doctor says no,
too dangerous.

It’s her time. Blood-bag sky,
full moon aching like a cervix.

I boil hot-tub water. Turn on the pulsating
jets, light a patchouli circle of candles.

I dress Julia in her black
silk pajamas, detach
the morphine pump from her stuttering pulse.

She is all skin and eaten-out bone,
weightless in my arms as a sac of flute-song.

I sit on the edge of the tub,
bearded legs opening like a woman’s,
and ease my Julia into water.

Her black pajamas blacken.

Julia cannot swallow
but she holds a wine glass,
the cold stem remembered
pleasure in her hand.

Her skull hairs wisp like cilia toward the jets.

I hold her
long after the last pulse comes.
Wine spills, a red cord
trailing from her goblet.

I turn off the jets. The water spikes
and ripples, spikes and ripples, spikes
and flat-lines.

This poem placed first in the 2009 Wild Violet Poetry Contest.

2009 Contest Winners

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She has tears and red eyes
In the airport
Sitting just steps
                           Away
Waiting to fly

Waiting to escape her broken world

Waiting
She bows her head
Down
Staring into the palms
                         Of her hands

Lines
Of a life she thought was hers
Lost eyes run along the line until
It comes to an end
And there she lingers

Waiting

Just steps away
Her decision is rising up

In the solitude of her soul

She stands on the edge of some precipice—
A woman
       who is so lonely
A woman
        who is so lost

Out in the ocean where
there is no sight of land
                     A woman who is long suffering
                                                waiting for a sign—

                                                                                …Then
Her phone rings…

_______________________

Yet, she is distant
Eyes unfocused
So far away
Her phone is ringing

Just five steps away
In a distant land
She comes to an end

Her phone is ringing louder longer
Demanding to be answered

_______________________

But it no longer matters
For the woman who had tears and red eyes
Waiting in an airport
So close to me and so far from me

Has flown away to some distant place

Her flight has been called…

This poem placed second in the 2009 Wild Violet Poetry Contest.

2009 Contest Winners 

Main Contests Page

I watched a mockingbird die this morning,
With factory smoke and runway to backdrop her exit.
Having banged her skull soundlessly against
the thick window, she fell on her back.
“Oh, no.” I heard myself say.
The scaffold of weightless skeleton descended
to graceful slow-motion.  Feet lost their hold and sank;
seed-eyes emptied, tailfeathers froze
straight to blank, blue sky. Out.
The man who heard me, looked.
“Oh that.” He said,
turning back to take an obliging picture
for a mother nearby whose little boy
did not notice the body on the ledge
as he pressed his nose toward the planes
rolling in and his grandmother hummed
“Amazing Grace” over her People.

This poem placed third in the 2009 Wild Violet Poetry Contest.

2009 Contest Winners  

Main Contests Page

Gizmo is missing. I’m
moving on Friday so the search is
frantic. Fliers, phone calls, all without
direction. Gizmo is missing. He left
Tuesday afternoon. I called
up and down empty streets.
The only response from a neighbor
who lost her cat to coyotes.

Up and down the halls, no fat cat
content to sleep in the sun. I’m
moving on Friday so the search is frantic.
Wondering, wandering but
Gizmo is still missing. He left Tuesday to a
neighbors who lost her cat to coyotes.
I stay up all night waiting, hoping he will see
the lights are on at 3 am.

The topic for June 2010 was “Round and Round.”

In a circle
Of wind savaged trees.
Branches

Leap from their mothers.  One babe
Taps my door,
But I stay inside, in uteri.

I harbor my thoughts. They fold within.
Pride
Is a constant tiller.
I will—

Not ask him again.
No, not again.

The topic for May 2010 was “My Favorite Mistake.”