The Create Freedom Contest
Poetry Winner
From the pages of our August 2022 Issue.
When the Berkshire Magazine team decided this year’s Create 4 Freedom Essay & Poetry Contest would focus on “Freedom and Dignity”, I joked with them that “Dignity” was a difficult word for poets to rhyme.
But the joke was on me… because we did not receive a single essay, but we did receive many poems.
Therefore, this year, we are awarding 1st prize to the top poem (“Freedom and the Dignity It Contains”), and printing two additional poems as honorable mentions. Thank you to all of the poets who shared their work – and congratulations to the top three finalists.
Joshua Sherman, M.D.
C.E.O., Old Mill Road Media
JIMMY iENNER, JR.
Freedom and the Dignity It Contains
By Ed Meek
With hayseed in my hair, I went to Massachusetts,
The most cultured state in the Union,
to take a few lessons in deportment. —1848
His humility seems so foreign
in our narcissistic age - a page
from a book we can no longer read
and yet the seeds of hope he planted
sprout in the spring in our hearts.
We search for the conviction and courage,
he displayed, fighting to preserve,
not only his ideas of freedom,
and the dignity it contains,
but the union of a land
divided still today, blinded
by bigotry and hate. How easy
it is to blame others for our faults.
Like another Abraham,
he was called to recreate a nation.
He stood firm to all assaults
as if already carved in rock.
And though he was finally slain,
his efforts point the way to the path
we need to follow If we’re to emerge
from darkness into the light of a new day.
Eating from the tree of dignity
By Clea Fowler
I eat well, as do my children.
We fill in a checklist every week
Meat, dairy, snacks, rice, beans
Pasta vegetables sad apples
We could request a specific kind of yogurt
If we were the fussy sort
Sometimes I use the money we save on groceries to buy toothpaste
Or new phone chargers
Or gas to pick up my children’s friends
Or sometimes I buy a few donuts
And feel bad
We taste all of it.
Nothing comes easy, for the most part.
But we are fed.
Dignity sometimes rides shotgun.
Dignity
By Staphanie Quinlan
The last time I saw my grandmother,
her white hair was limp and pillow-matted,
her eyelids the sullen color of a bruise.
She had been reduced by time
to the sustenance or memories:
a handmade satin gown with long gloves;
a quiet husband in a sturdy brick house;
a prodigal daughter on a decades-long leash.
Hail Mary…
My mother's hair smells like cigarettes.
She laughs loud and often, apologizing
for showing the missing teeth
that were cheaper to remove than repair.
She wears my old clothes -
they remind her of when tatters were
a political protest. She stores baggies of pot
in the shirt pockets, and calls it a gift,
never charity.
Hail Mary, full of grace…
My body has bloomed with the weight of
three children and too much wine, but
men still converse with my breasts.
I take up more space than I used to in a pew,
or a waiting room,
or an office chair, and I'm told to pay
in guilt per pound.
Hail Mary, full of grace, Blessed art thou…
My daughter climbs into my lap,
and I carry her to bed, soft legs dangling.
I whisper to her that her dignity is not found in
youth, or wealth, or flesh.
We are born to our mothers holy; there is
divinity pooling in our veins and skimming
across our very skin.
Hail Mary, full of grace,
Blessed art thou among women.
Found in the studio of Daniel Chester French at Chesterwood is Genius of Creation, plaster working model, 1915. This year celebrates the centennial of French’s monumental statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. // JIMMY iENNER, JR.