Winners: 3-Way Contest

The Chattanooga Writers’ Guild is excited to announce the winners of our recent 3-Way Contest in which writers were challenged to include each of these three words in their entries: rust, cut, and window. The winners whose works are excerpted below are as follows: Alexandria Kelly, Sue Carol Elvin, M.D. (Peggy) Roblyer, Jenna Ziegler, L.B. Blackwell, Sherry Poff, and Chris Wood. The complete works will be available in our next anthology, which we hope to release before November.

We wish to extend a special thank you to our three judges, who were recent CWG contest winners: John C. Mannone, poetry; Cynthia Robinson Young, non-fiction; and James Brumbaugh, fiction.

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1st Place, Fiction: Alexandria Kelly

The Ship is Going to Crash (an excerpt)

The lights overhead flare a low red in slow bursts, with a warning tone to indicate emergency status. Two attendants- a short man with a round face and a taller woman with blue eyeshadow- flit methodically down the two rows of seats lining the walls of the small ship. I bow my head when the man instructs, and the simple seatbelt is traded for a padded, u-shaped brace. He continues down the line. The cabin resounds with another heavy tone- as if any of us could forget.

I do a head count, to calm my racing heart.

Most of the seats lining the walls are empty, and the remaining have been collected to the middlemost area by the attendants. To my right is a man I label as One. He reeks of alcohol, and had been happily humming along to the music in his headphones before the alarms started. Now? His bleary gaze shifts towards the movement of the attendants and forlornly out the porthole windows across the way. I wonder if I envy his dulled awareness or not. . . .

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1st Place, Non Fiction: Sue Carol Elvin

The Scar That Traveled (an excerpt)

Charlotte, tired of counting my wrinkles, slid off my lap parting the robe I was wearing.  “How did you get that scar?” she said as she began examining my right leg.

 I remember that summer day. I was older than you.  Ten, maybe nine, walking alone through the tall grass of the field that stretched between my grandmother’s house and the rest of the world. Ma, as we called her, lived in the house that my grandfather built for his first wife, and 12 children. But that’s a story for another time. Right now I’m gonna tell you how I got that scar.

It was odd for me to be alone. Where were my cousins? We were always together, racing through the fields, climbing into the loft above the barn, playing Chinese Checkers on Ma’s tin gameboard. But that day, it was just me, moseying along, hoping the mosquitoes didn’t come out to gnaw on my shorts-clad legs. . . .

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2nd Place, Non Fiction: M.D. (Peggy) Roblyer

Cat Fight (an excerpt)

Mom despised housework but seemed to reserve special contempt for her role as family cook. As we compared notes after her funeral, my brothers and I agreed that Mom’s meals were memorably dreadful. Dad always ate everything gratefully, perhaps recalling his brush with starvation during the Great Depression. Two of his favorites were “shit on a shingle” made from dried chipped beef, and creamed asparagus on toast using canned asparagus and asparagus juice thickened with milk and flour. Sometimes Mom warmed up milk and butter and threw in shelled oysters for a quick swim before scooping the soup into bowls and tossing some saltines on the table. The only seasoning she ever used was salt and lots of it. . . .

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1st Place, Poetry: Jenna Ziegler

The Sword Swallower (an excerpt)

Open your glassy eyes to the sunrise. 
Blink and scrape away those salty 
contrails with the palms of your hands. 
There is more secret to life than that great burning 
star cutting your bleary gaze—
more than the heartbreak, the bittersweet,
the sorrow burrowed deep in your chest like a fox, 
like a hacking cough, 
like a too-deep breath of icepick air.
There is still the dawnlight. Still the brine. . . .

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2nd Place, Poetry: LB Blackwell

Library (an excerpt)

I want to start a library in my yard,
stick a post in the dirt by the road,
fasten a box with a small door, 
its plastic window opening on little
rusty hinges, like the pink-streaked 
petals of spring beauties
offering pearls of pollen
to the tiny buzzing mystics 
who perform their holy work 
among the sharp green  . . . .
 

L.B. Blackwell teaches high school English in Chattanooga and writes an occasional column for the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

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Honorable Mention, Poetry: Sherry Poff

Possibility (an excerpt)

Upturned on a cinder block beside the back porch,
an iron pot gathers rust with each rain. How long
the pot has been there and why I have it,
I no longer recall. 

I tell myself I will clean this pot when I have time, 
scrub it free of the sheen of neglect as soon  
as I find a window of opportunity. But perhaps
that is a lie, . . .

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Honorable Mention, Poetry: Chris Wood

After the Last Shift (an excerpt)
 
In a dungeon of soot,
light drips gold on the foundry floor
beneath the broken window.
 
Rust sleeps heavy on the rib-caged mill
of molten memory, hymns hushed,
just echoes pressed into the steel rafters. . . .

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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 2025 Monthly Contest Series Info page to view the genre and theme for each month.

The contests are free to enter for members of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. To become a member, click HERE