Local Laureates and Wordsmiths
POETR R E
was a challenge. In 2013, we updated the contest, asking for Twitter poems (restricted to 140 characters) and Flash Fiction, which is limited to only three sentences. Aspiring writers had to be fast and furious with their words. Enjoy.
✻ Winner Untitled
140
El ir y venir The coming and going
Y
TWIT T
TCP’s annual summer poetry and fiction contest grows each year, and has become one of the events ourstaff is most excited for. Toledo has untapped great writers, eager to be published. Deciding this year’s winners
de las ondas of waves como gente que concimos like people we know
Mary Rios
Runners-up The Paper
there is no us
Old Skool Hip Hop Disco.
in u.s.a./or
Take the kids to Sunshine.
poems composed with 140 characters or less
Press On
bu.s.iness;
Absolute ragtime car show.
so blow your whistles
Reconnect with rhinoplasty
manley/snowden/assange
or adopt Milly today.
press, press
Brenna Duggan
your lips to the whistle & blow those sweet liberating keys
Sam Wright
Fiction
✻ Winner A Game of Chance Two old white men sat around a flat-screen TV blaring
works of fiction in three sentences or less
news from the war. An aspirin factory had just been bombed in Damascus, and one of the men fumbled in his wallet for a crumpled twenty. “You’re a fool still betting on Baghdad,” the second man chuckled, folding
The End
Runners-up
As time races on, I hold on so tightly I can hardly breathe. Each memory plays back in
the bill before putting it in the pocket over his heart.
Eric Pilcher
I Should Have Bought MP3’s
my mind with perfect details like an old class-
Boy and Girl meet and fall in love.
room projector from the seventies. When the
Boy and Girl break up a couple years later.
film runs out and begins to flap over and over,
Boy can no longer find any of his CDs.
I smile while crying and put down the weight of the world because it is the end.
www.toledocitypaper.com
Nina Beckford
Brandon Ridner July 31 • August 13
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