We are excited to announce the winner of the October 2024 Chattanooga Writers’ Guild Monthly Contest is John C. Mannone. In what may be a first for our poetry contest, one poet swept the winning spots. His works, “Rite of Passage,” “Attrition,” and “Lakota Dance,” won the top three honors, respectively. However, at the author’s request, we are sharing only his first- and second-place poems at this time. Poet Finn Bille judged this month’s submissions with the theme “Indigenous.”
Rite of Passage
Fog settles over the river, gray in marginal light.
Elms reach into sky’s dusk: La Noche de Brujas.
As the Banshee cries, her moans echo from limestones
cliffing across the water answering antiphonal wails.
A gilded casket pushes through water, edges
the stillness. Down river, its wake parts the shadowed
crests between the dying light of sinking sun
and rising spirit of the dead—Día de los Muertos.
The burial canoe cradles the Michoacán king.
His hair, silver-braided with silk knotting strands,
glistens like the crow’s wings in full midnight moon.
His body, draped with beaver and wolf, is half-hidden
in their softness. Through the mist, he drifts toward
the river’s fork. Will he slip-by the Stygian branch?
Will his quiet prayers pay? Will tribal chants—elegiac,
sibilant—quell the keeper of hell? Witch’s harsh
whispers wash over the righteous king. The guardian
has been paid in full with the stench of Pizarro’s blood.
Attrition
The Appalachian sun pulls itself up
over steamy Chilhowee peaks,
tinting sky persimmon and cyan.
And the Tanasi threading through
the valley catches a glance
of light that platinums the surface
its depths still in solemn indigo—
the dammed Tennessee drowns
the graves of the Cherokee and Yuchi.
Hemlock and pine with maple and oak
sentinel the banks and escarpments,
trees shedding tears, the shimmer
of xanthophyll and carotene.
The spirit of their creator embodies
all of nature, so when the mountains
crumble to sand, and waters disappear
as mist,
and the sky grows pale before the darkness
and the light of stars twinkles out,
they'll all return their substance
to the spirit in their time.
And each of us in our time, all our flesh
and bones, must return to dust
our spirit joining the breath
from whence it came.
John C. Mannone has poems in Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He won the Dwarf Stars Award (2020); was awarded a Horror Writers Association Scholarship (2017) and a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature; and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). He has five full-length collections, the latest, Dark Wind, Dark Water, a novella-length horror fiction collection, is forthcoming from Mind’s Eye Publishing. He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and Silver Blade. He’s a professor of physics who recently taught mathematics and creative writing in a Tennessee magnet high school.
Social Media: http://jcmannone.wordpress.com, https://www.facebook.com/jcmannone/
The Monthly Contests rotate through a pattern of Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction throughout the year, with a new theme each month. Go to the 2024 Monthly Contest Series Info page to view the genre and theme for each month.
This contest is free to enter for members of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. To become a member, click HERE
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