Household chores turned out to be a popular prompt. I want to thank everyone who entered the February Poetry Challenge, and to apologize that the results are being posted late. The March Challenge will be posted in a day or two, and the deadline extended a bit latter into the month as a result.

Congratulations to Lennart Lundh for the winning poem:

What Went Where

  

Standing close in the kitchen, she washed,

he dried, and with her guidance learned

which cabinet held what on which shelf,

where the silverware went, how pots nested

to make the best use of what room there was.

This was after the first dinner together,

after her children went out to play a while.

Finished, she turned and gave a long lesson

on how his lips fitted best with hers,

with reassurances of further instruction.

  

~ Lennart Lundh

They judge, Jan Bottiglieri, commented, “I loved this one for how sweet and unadorned it was, transforming a common household ritual into something intimate and special. The title sets us up for the repeated "w" sounds—and those specifics of what, where, was, and with -- all accompanied by the natural kiss our own lips make when we form that sound. Really lovely!”

There were four honorable-mention poems. They are:

“The Day My Laurel Hedge Spoke to Me,” by Anne Walsh Donnelly

“Miguel Cleans the Toilet,” by Joe Cottonwood

“Abbondanza,” by Felicia Sanzari Chernesky

“At the Window,” by Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes

Please check back in a couple of days for the March Challenge.

Bios:

Lennart Lundh is a poet, short-fictionist, historian, and photographer. His work has appeared internationally since 1965, and he's a proud member of the amazing Northeast Illinois and Northwest Indiana poetry community. Kelsay Books will release his next collection, Pictures, Postcards, Letters, later this year. The seventh of his annual chapbooks raising funds for St. Baldrick's research into childhood cancers, Poems Against Cancer 2020, will be created during National Poetry Month.

Jan Bottiglieri lives and writes in suburban Chicago. She is a managing editor for the poetry annual RHINO and holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Jan’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in more than 40 journals and anthologies including december, Rattle, DIAGRAM, Willow Springs and New Poetry from the Midwest. Jan is the author of two chapbooks, A Place Beyond Luck and Where Gravity Pools the Sugar; and two full-length poetry collections: Alloy (Mayapple Press, 2015) and Everything Seems Significant: The Blade Runner Poems (BlazeVOX [books], 2019).