...AND FOR THOSE WHO MISSED IT

THE WINNERS OF THE "WRITTEN IN THE STARS" CONTEST HOSTED by

PROSE DIVISION

FIRST PLACE:  <da:thumb id="391963179"/>


SECOND PLACE:  The History of StarlightHere, in the darkness of a cloudless night and on the crest of a hill, Máküs stands beside the most welcome of familiar strangers.  There is a thunderous silence beneath the throbbing surge of blood in his ears.  It is muggy and still: a mosquito night.  He feels the dampness of sweat trapped beneath his shirt, and he blushes at the threat of revelation in it.  There are ways, he has heard, to read the presence of pheromones in human sweat, and he wonders—now—if telepathy is simply a matter of recognizing the language of odor.
He wonders—
…now…
—if lust can be named in the mingled redolence of sweat, cigarette smoke, and wine consumed in a cellar bar more than twenty narrow steps beneath Vodičková Street.
Can Nathaniel—standing so close to him on the ruined, crumbling base of a dead statue’s pedestal—smell the lightning-bolt surge of amatory turbulence burning through Máküs



THIRD PLACE:  constellationsShe travels between worlds as others travel between sunflower fields; cords joining two fish, knotted together, and maybe you can see them, if you squint - (the brightest of those stars is fourth magnitude, so better get your telescope, and better know where to look, if you're searching for those specific pinpoints of concentrated light) - and when the sun transits the area from three hundred thirty to three hundred sixty degrees, that's when the dreamers are said to be born.
Spring children, with big eyes, and declared sensitive souls. And so I am a spring child, with small hands full of dreams and many more unspoken words.
The last of the signs is about harmony and swimming on, eternally attracted to the endless blue horizon, Neptune's loyal subject. Have you met her? No, and neither have I - but I imagine her hair to flow like waves and her hands to be the cooling pools whose touch invites you to rest. Two fish said to have transformed (Aphrodite and Eros, or Venus and Cupid, anyway



HONORABLE MENTIONS:

      She, of TwoAbove me the forest canopy silhouettes the night sky in an elaborate  frame of reaching branches and fluttering leaves, now stilled.
The stars pause in their meandering for my view; the trees wave, revealing some and concealing others.
"Sidere mens eadem mutato,” as my father would say-- though the constellations change, the mind is universal.
I scoop my hands through the dark water, pushing my form along by the smallest gestures. A tree with roots firmly planted in the pond passes my floating form and the shade (just a temporary asylum from the moon’s gaze) recedes. There appears my fellow traveller, illuminating his way across the sky in increments just as I travel these wetlands.
Sudden wind slinks its way across my exposed skin (pink knees, bony shoulders, a sallow face-- almost disembodied above the opaque water) once again, in synchrony with the quivering leaves. Unforgiving, but I’m sheltered from its wrath; cocooned in dark water with the current c    <da:thumb id="389774645"/>

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POETRY DIVISION


FIRST PLACE:  Ruminations on a Fallen Star, Not Yet Fallen    A priori:
Though I am not in love yet, I will be.
I remember how our eyes will meet;
you will see the green stars in my eyes for what they are.
I am afraid.
1. I am star-crossed, tattooed and traversed;
my clumsy limbs build a bridge of my belly
for the constellations to write their paths onto my pounding heart.
Some days these star charts are a chain link fence across my body
and on others—I can trace your name in the lines between my stars,
not the name you bear now but the true one I have always known,
the one that is for me.
2. Nostalgia is always poetic, but the blood memories
are harder to pinpoint; they do not catch like butterflies.
We cannot feel their feathered scales, their veined wings
just their violence against the insides of our veins,
the strength they give us, the gods they hope to make of us—
cruor vult, and I may only hope to survive their frantic seas.
3. I have never been so aware of all the muscles in my neck,
of the way my


SECOND PLACE:  The Sky BullEuropa,
most beautiful:
even in dreams you are fought for.
Asia says she is your mother,
the other land is a stranger
and she plies you with fame.
She says she will take your name.
It is over.
She has already won.
He has spied you.
Fate rides swiftly.
Can you hear the hoof beats?
Can you feel them shake the earth as they ride through morning?
Fronti nulla fides.
You garland the head of a lie in wild roses and narcissus.
You marvel and caress the coat of purest white mockery, then boldly mount it's back.
Europa,
this is no stray bull in your meadow,
nor is he gentle or tame.
Across the ocean he flies, bounding tirelessly over waves while you scream and hold white-knuckle tight to his golden horns.
Sea gods and merry Nereids frolic beside you as you pray for your life, but it is Zeus that has stolen you away.
Europa,
it is not your life he wants.
Cast your beauty into the sea;
let it slip away.
Sacrifice it to Aphrodite,
or fair Persephone,
but keep none for yours


THIRD PLACE:  I am the EverybodyNot the sun--have dawdled in the outside darkness,
discerning the Big Dipper and its bowl's guiding line
to Polaris. Everything else is foreign, an ebon map
with pinpoints of cities and near unpronounceable names:
Adhafera, Algieba, Denebola, Regulus--cultures uttered
in divination's two-toned newsprint dialect.
Then comes the thought of what if: life circulating them
as it does here, and if their soundless gap
can challenge the record between each human life:
the files of our moving lines on damaged roads, at work
and its day-to-day redundancy, the bits of information
we've become online: nothing but ones and zeroes. Even I
cannot find Leo and its heart of galaxies, the ruling sun
finally rising as I attempt sleep through its hindering light,
when it dawns on me as appropriate: unus multorum,
creativity's inhibition--an over-tasting, a dilution.
I am a lion among lions, a major and minor
against the unknowns of every other constellation,
the unknown of each smile in passing, th



HONORABLE MENTIONS



Libra VenerisVenus– Goddess of air and light
Adorning colors of sunset hues
Of ivory, pink, and glowing blues
While she awaits the waxing night
To measure stars upon her scale
That judges beauty from each gem,
Each light to sit around the hem
Like cultured pearls upon her veil.
But Libra's house will never tilt
To sacrifice her pleasure dome
The palace that she calls her home
By chance to cause a rose to wilt.
Hoc quidem nunquam facies.    because we're too afraid to fly in daylightjust when i thought i was home,
the welcome mat
turned to tacks beneath my feet.
i apologized for the blood
that crept into the cracks and stained your porch.
this isn't the redwood i had in mind;
but i think it's kind of beautiful,
in the same way
a moth can't find its way to the stars
from inside the garage so it
flicks its maddened wings to make a
ting, ting, ting
on a dying lightbulb.
"abyssus abyssum invocat,"
i whisper to the winged-dreamer
as she makes her way across my cheek.
i know she hears it as she
eases past my softly, parted lips.
ex glande quercus,
her wings thump morse code
against the rawness of my throat
and i swallow to quiet her pain.
hush, now shush. be still, my dear;
trees do not talk or bleed.
you've given your wings to grow with me
and we will reach the heavens.
we will be greater than the oaks
as our forest of hair plants us among the stars;
then, we will be home.
sister;
gemini,
hitched to the sky
with the veins of your wings
and stuck with the red of    RegulusThe sky so close, heaven so far
and sand is white, white as your arms
Look through the bars
look at the stars
night covered the land with her charms.
What are the lines between the stars?
The lines of fate, like in your palms
Who wrote them there
in the thin air
the sky is clear as the night calms
The ram, the bull, the twins, the crab
virgin and lion - you and me
Farewell my love,
we'll meet above
between the stars we will be free
I'll be the lion's brightest star:
where no treason can quench my light
and when I fall
to you I call:
Morituri te salutant!

On The Threshold of CreationDaughter of Hecate,
I was born upon the threshold
of one year and the next:
a tiny earthen creature,
awash in a sea of stars.
Too late did I remember
Capricorn is the goat with
the tail of a fish,
and perhaps my legs were never meant
to tread upon the earth.
I've heard tell
that Saturn is the harshest master,
and will never be satisfied
by words alone.
In the beginning I was sure-footed
as the goat who glitters in stars above me,
ideas sprung full-grown from my head,
as Athena born from Zeus
Too late do I recall
that prophecy foretold,
Zeus' own creation
would surpass even him.
I'm still trying to puzzle out
whether my own creation
will surpass me, and live on,
or destroy me altogether.
Yet still I weave my words,
and endeavor to make Athena proud.
She beckons me home,
tall and stern from woven banner:
tempts me with promises of "Eureka",
and still I pray, to any who would hear me
that my living words will whisper
"non omnis moriar."        In star-crossed balanceand I will learn
how to sew these skies together
when the constellations
unravel themselves
like a monsoon.
pillars of bones
and the quakes of every heartache
rests in the space
between my lungs
and my ribcage-
a home built to shelter
the song of the ocean
and the sweet silence of clouds
drifting above my irises,
against the downpour of waterforms
colliding in my veins.
[pluma, membrana-
nothing but the softness of dreams
and the heaviness of air]
I am a star-crossed lover;
a body who nurtures the mind
the heart
and the soul-
misers in a variety of matrimony
with this forsaken archipelago
whose plates have long ago been
separated by their unequal forces
scattered
seasoned
seorsum
then the climax
of life
came in slow motion
in vigorous verses.
unfolding
the beginning of the end,
flowers blooming from bone marrows
and the sounds
of heavy breathing
accendo
white dwarves
pour out into the open
scattered like debris,
the discontinuity of souls
in my palms
but only the m

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Congratulations to all the winners. Thank you to for bringing such spectacular talent into the light.