Arizona is full of creative poets!
The Copper Courier has been hosting an open mic at Cha Cha’s Tea Lounge in downtown Phoenix for almost a year now, and we’ve been blown away by the poets who have shared their work.
Knowing there’s hidden talent among us is what inspired us to launch our first-ever poetry contest last month.
Readers of all ages and from all over the state submitted poems, and we loved reading every single one of them!
The first-place poet was invited to be a featured reader at our May 31 open mic, while the top three submissions are posted here and will be added to our social media feeds and in our newsletter.
Here are the winners of our contest and their poems:
Trinity Miracle
Phoenix, 22
“Beautiful Black Voyager”
I am the descendant of piano keys
and a tight grip on a baseball bat,
emerging from Texas soil.
And a survivor of gentrification.
I am a vessel for life,
and a mover of water
in all of its forms.
I am a manifester of culture and revolution.
A breaker of curses,
and a healer of the dream deferred.
Beautiful Black Voyager of life,
how did the sky open for your ascendance?
What does your conscious know about your existence
when your world is burned to ashes
but your kingdom is still standing?
And the sun,
blazing on your skin.
Your feet,
covered in soil.
When dreams are not just dreams.
They are prophecies.
They are the flesh of the real world
when my mind manifests into my fingertips,
and everything I touch turns to gold.
Or magma if I ever so choose.
We are learners of life,
but teachers of things we’ve learned in a past life.
Fore if the revolution never be televised,
It is remembered by my spirit,
and that is enough.
That if death ever wished upon me,
I am never truly dead.
Or broken,
or hurt,
or banished from this realm,
because I will be in the next.
I am untouchable,
yet incapable
of judging another life.
Not even my own.
Fore the inner-child within me,
is me.
And my footprint will be a fossil
in the same streets another body lays,
and I see the next day.
Mark Coryell
Ahwatukee, 67
“Prayer For Our Southern Border”
“Oración Por Nuestra Frontera Del Sur”
Quiero vivir en la tierra de Paz, Esperanza y Libertad
Quiero ganar la riqueza de oro, plata y poder
Quiero Libertad de mi país y mi gobierno
Quiero Libertad de mi mala vida
¿Donde puedo tener Libertad, Poder, y Fortuna?
Everyday we hear the news
Of the new immigrants waiting at our Southern Border
We are told they want our jobs
We are told they want us to speak a language we don’t understand
We are told they simply want freedom and hope
¿Dónde está la tierra de Paz, Esperanza y Libertad?
Es un lugar al norte o es un sueño
Un sueño no podemos tener
Es un sueño de las corporaciones y la gente rica de Estados Unidos?
¿Un sueño que no tenemos el dinero para comprar?
These immigrants tell us they want a better life
For their young, their tired, their poor,
These immigrants tells us they are yearning to breathe free
Maybe just like our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents
Do we believe the voices of these immigrants?
¿Es Estados Unidos un sueño de una tierra, una verdad, una realidad?
¿Cómo puede saber?
¿La gente de las iglesias en nuestro país o Estados Unidos?
¿La gente de nuestro gobierno o nuestros abogados aquí o allá?
¿Cómo podemos tener el sueño norteamericano?
We were told government won’t solve our problems
We were told government is our problem
We were told that The Business of America is Business
What happened to Love, Hope, Charity?
¿Qué es el sueño norteamericano?
¿Es el sueño norteamericano un lugar?
Un lugar donde no podemos ir
¿Qué es el sueño norteamericano?
¿Un lugar, una idea, o una mentira?
We were told by a Young President
Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You
Ask What You can Do for Your Country
We were told by an Old President
Our Greatest Fear is Fear Itself
Do we still believe those words?
Es el país de Estados Unidos de Norteamérica
Un país solo para la gente que diga que
El mundo es para nosotros primero y para nadie más
Y ustedes no tienen derecho de vivir en nuestro mundo.
Hannah Levin
Tucson, 14
“kaleidoscope”
we were violet in some waking sky
untinged with soft or harsh;
a pastel loftily bleeding ink
unbetrothed to the abbot,
divorcing your diffused dark.
preening the comatose wing,
brushing its frigid beak,
apropos at midnight
twinkling winter’s soiled bells,
her kaleidoscope’s a life apart.
sharpening the edges
of kinship’s sawed-out blade,
shouldering a generation’s burdens
with songs of jaded hearts.
Jessica Swarner Jessica Swarner is the community editor for The Copper Courier. She is an ASU alumna and previously worked at KTAR News 92.3 FM in Phoenix.
