We received an extraordinary number of amazing submission for our first poetry contest of the year, and it took much hard work from our staff, to make the final decisions. Congratulations to Sara Dailey for taking third place in the Spring Poetry Contest of 2017! 

The Half Life of Love

The rate of decay (when started), predictable,
by which all traces split in two
and eventually become unnoticeable.

The rate at which it is not longer able
to be located amidst the body’s organs,
no longer cellulose or cartilage

bolstering your insides, filling out
the shape of you until you become more
than just skeletal, an empty bone cage.

The rate at which it is no longer a map
that anyone could follow, no longer leading
anyone anywhere, least of all home.

Sara Dailey: “I am the author Earlier Lives, finalist for the Backwaters Prize in Poetry in 2012 and The Science of Want, winner of the 2009 Shadow Poetry chapbook competition and a finalist for the Flume Press prize. I have been nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes, both for my poem “That Summer” and for my essay “The Memory Train,” and two of my poems have been turned into music by award winning composer Paul John Rudoi. My poems and essays have also appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Asheville Poetry Review, New South, Cimarron Review, and Calyx, among others.”