Contest Winner

Congratulations to Cynthia Blank, the winner of our most recent blog contest, "villanelle." We loved her poem "In a Summer Day;" give it a read and notice especially the way she both adheres to the villanelle style while also choosing moments to break out of the strict guidelines of the form.

In A Summer Day

Cynthia BlankThe things you know and refuse to say;(filling out the subconscious lists constructed in your head)I should tell you now, summer mayflies die todaywhen the sun has fled and the sky turns grayyou let me believe they’d remain forever in my bedalong with you and the things you knew but refused to saylike the stories of late spring kisses that went by waytoo fast; your hands began to slip out of mine and ledthe mayflies to sink their wings for all of yesterdayit wasn’t just those fading blue stars you chose to betrayI didn’t hate you when needles pricked me through a threadbut there were other things - you didn’t know enough to sayor to touch my wrist, the bare skin where now my fingers laypressed against my pulse; I know I’m alive not deadit was only the mayflies who were lost in a single summer dayonly not; the cold air also chased the two of us away(I should have loved some luminescent firefly instead)there were far too many things you knew you could not saysummer mayflies always die in a summer day