2023 Valentine's Message in a Bottle Poetry Contest Winners!
By Flapper Press Poetry Café:
"I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you."
— Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle
We are ready and excited to announce the winners of our Third Annual Valentine's Day Poetry Contest!
It all started in 2021 with our Juliet Letters contest and, as always, the poets who submitted this year did not disappoint. Indeed, we had our largest number of submissions to date!
We are so grateful and appreciative to these poets who dare to share their work. Thanks to all the poets who submitted!
We change up our judging and prompts for each contest, so please continue to submit in the future. We are not bound to any one way of writing and consider all submissions. Your chances are always high to receive one of our monetary prizes!
In our desire to highlight poets through our Flapper Press Poetry Café, we have devised many staple projects, including our poet and writer interviews as well as our contest offerings consisting of a variety of multi-themed prompts. In the coming year we'll unveil even more Flapper Press initiatives. So stay tuned!
As we continue to nurture a community of poets and informed readers here at the Flapper Press Poetry Café, we hope that you will recognize that Flapper Press is a work of love. So it is only fitting we express love through this 2023 Valentine's Day collection of poetry.
As a reminder, this year's Valentine's poetry call instructed to:
Write a poetic letter or poem of any form—rhyme, free verse, sonnet, pantoum, etc. The "message" may be to a loved one, to someone you haven't met yet, to a grandparent, to a child, to a stranger—your choice!
Now on to our 2023 Valentines' Day Poetry selections! Thank you to all our winners (presented in alphabetical order)!
1. Sherri Buerky
Aren't We Made of Love Ourselves?
My child,
Do not weep and bemoan the absence of love,
For what is love?
Is it as some believe
just an act of our cerebral cortex
firing up our neurons and synaptic connections,
a conjuring up of emotional sensations that is purely a chemically induced reaction?
Could love possibly be
residue from galactic collisions
Minerals, molecules, stardust,
a recipe,
for cosmic creme brulee
that embodies centuries old memories
drawn from all cosmic forces
Deep in celestial space,
residing in our very bones and tissues,
held for generations thru out time in our DNA.
Aren't we made from love ourselves
my child?
Isn't love our very core that nutures our souls?
A gift given to root and grow flowering the essence of who we are.
Blooming with sight, sound, taste, feel, smell
enkindling all the wonderous sences
causing an augmentation of cherished love seeds
dispersing amongst us.
Do not weep my child
For aren't we made of love ourselves?
Love is our environment,
Soil
Roots
Bones
Frame
Forum
Sheathing
Tissue
Roof
Contents,
And extensions
Our molecular makeup.
Do not weep my child
Love is always present,
It is the treasure bulb
ensconced within each creation,
and metastasized to eternity,
the ambrosia to existence.
Do not weep my child
For aren't we made of love ourselves?
2. Angelica Esquivel
a collision
& i cling to you
losing my gaze
in the neon light.
the bright red
glass looks
softer than it is,
gently bent
into fresh berries
that flourish.
we gain so much
honey. oil
pastels friction
into paint, paint
frictions
into steam
& i’m focusing,
my love, on
everything.
3. Brooke Herter James
Temperatures Rising
Settled here on the stoop,
winnowing summer’s heat
shimmering with vibration—
out over the long prairie grass
a tiny cricket whispers of lust,
in the riverbank cottonwood
a yellowthroat warbles with desire,
even the wild blue flax unfurls
her petals wide for the honeybee,
and so it is that I see you
in your broad-brimmed hat
walking the road to my open door
and, baby, I melt.
4. Katherine Keeney
"This is a fictional letter from a 21-year-old Irish immigrant in New York
to her best friend back home in Donegal in 1916."
Coney Island—Showing Some Skin
Dearest Margaret well sometimes I feel like Ill never be able to leave this house of work though I am grateful for the employers. They are kind and pay me well enough I still cannot save much or start me own life away from here and Joe do not have much income yet as he writes articles mostly about Ireland and maybe the newspaper will buy them and maybe they will not so we cannot be sure and our future is stalled because of money and that is the way of the poor and working people everywhere we have no future and it is struggle but at least here there are more people more business than in Ireland still it is no gold stairway that some like to believe or an easy ride like the ones on Coney Island where Joe and I went though it were too much money for us but we needed a fun day and went to the beach and I even went into the ocean to swim in me bathing attire so Joe got to see more of me than he ever has and I liked taking off me shoes and stockings in front of him and bend down and around so he can see some parts of me and he stuck his face into me chest and left his cheek there with his stubble beard on me soft skin and we enjoyed each other and it were a perfect warm day not too hot and I felt a little bad about enjoying meself when Joe were talking about the bloody war going on in Europe but the air and breeze and sky and water were all I could think about and Joe of course and our future and it were a wonderful day away from work something we do not get to do often and I ate a hot dog and after the long day I were blissfully tired when Joe dropped me off and he came inside to say hello to the McCormicks and I pinched a tin of meat and a couple of biscuits from the kitchen and slipped them in his pocket and he went on his way to the boarding house where he lives a couple miles away and it were a day to remember and dream about so few in this vale of tears but there I go talking too much about meself and I wish ye was here to have girl talks with. I do not have that here but I can write to ya me dear Margaret and almost feel like ya are in the room with me like when we was kids love Rose.
5. Jane Martin
Love
Bear with me while I tell you about love,
Not the Disney movie love,
Not the Diana Ross love
Maybe not even what you think about love.
Bear with me while I tell you what I think of love.
The world we live in ties love up in pretty boxes, wrapped with flimsy bows offered up for sale.
The world we live in sells cards written in words like syrup.
The world tries to bottle love and fills your mailbox and magazines with strips of scent.
They come in like snow in December and February when love is a word scattered like bird seed, and gobbled up greedily by lonely souls.
These are but tokens, pieces of love.
Bear with me while I tell you we hear about love in churches, mosques,
temples, synagogues, and street corners.
But love is not those things for it is as large as the sky.
Love cannot be contained in a bottle or spoken only in holy places.
Love cannot be boxed and tied with ribbons, those are tokens.
Bear with me while I say
Love is the blanket of sun warming the land,
Greeting the purple crocus after a long winter nap.
Love is the joy of planting seeds with hope in our hearts.
Love is the laughter of children eating watermelon and spitting seeds just for fun.
Love is touching others with tenderness without desperation for return.
All these things are just pieces of love for as Rumi said,
"Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces”
Love is as big as the sky, uncontainable.
6. Martin Pederson
Love ids ...
Flavors of a country to take home
in your bag with the flavor of a person
odors on awaking will
this last forever, for ever, ever for
all the travel restrictions
inviolable border and checkpoints
obstacles big as moons, oceans
with no shores, cannot keep me
from you, so far away
touching skin to skin and yet
the human condition
so far away, the illusion
of the senses, the confusion as
we'd never met merely passed
in the mall like black spaceships
in black space, no lights since
everything here is frozen while
melted back on Earth never
to return, never to womb
I do not accept never
I do not accept you
accepting never
why you -- when any dude will do
-- you at that new Jamaican Barbeque
laughing at my bullshit
and spit some food on me
we cracked up, they stared
anyone else spits on me
nobody spits on me
I knew we'd be okay together
until the world ends
which seems imminent.
Presenting a wide range of poetry with a mission to promote a love and understanding of poetry for all. We welcome submissions for compelling poetry and look forward to publishing and supporting your creative endeavors. Submissions may also be considered for the Pushcart Prize.
Submission Guidelines:
1. Share at least three (3) poems
2. Include a short bio of 50–100 words, written in the third person.
(Plus any website and links.)
3. Share a brief backstory on each submitted poem
4. Submit an Author's photo and any images you want to include with the poems
5. Send all submissions and questions to: info@flapperpress.com