We are thrilled to announce the winner of the latest Mini 2-Day Poem Contest that we played on Saturday!
Jess Lukie is our winner, for “Bloom,” written using the words “kumquat,” “emanation,” and “etiolate.” You can read Jess’s poem below.
Congrats to Jess and thank you to everyone who participated! We hope you had fun, and that you feel proud of the poems you wrote using some of our favourite words from previous 2-Day Contests.
It’s almost time for the real contest! The 2023 2-Day Contest is April 21-23. We’ll see you then!
Bloom
You try to tell me of wild plums,
the way they
bruise if picked, how you
plucked them from neighbours’ yards
anyway;
stolen juices sweet and
sticky, running down your
small brown chins.
We are driving, you are
animated, describing their size,
their colour
searching for the word
in english –
“kumquat?” I offer
determined to know this fruit
as if maybe I could understand
the taste of home in your
mouth
but you shake your head,
the emanation of years of having to settle
for the closest word
vapour surrounding us in the car
thick like the heat
of a sun
you haven’t seen in years.
You are a sugarbush
who has never stopped blooming
despite being transplanted
a world away
your brilliance a testament to what grows
when one resists
the world’s best attempts
to etoliate.