As you'll note below in links to Justin Hunt's many publications and prizes over the past few years, it's no surprise that this prolific poet won Bacopa Literary Review 2015's second-place poetry prize:
Autumn, Huntington Beach
They curl in sand,In 2015, Justin's poems appeared in Comstock Review (2nd prize, 2015 Muriel Craft Bailey Contest for "Two West and a Half South"), Atlanta Review (International Publication Prize for "Oblivion," Fall Poetry Issue, 2015), Kansas City Voices (Whispering Prairie Press, 1st place for "Of Light and Time"), Spoon River Poetry Review's 2015 Editors' Prize Contest ("Nocturne" was 1st runner-up), 2015 Freshwater Review ("My Mother, My Father"), and Northern Colorado Writers Pooled Ink's annual poetry contest ("Cold Night in March" was Editor's Pick).
October in their sagging
skin, pocked bodies
poured bronze with sun.
Others sit, lips and teeth
as dull as their chairs
corroded frames, hair
frayed like plastic seats,
time unraveled. Men
plump into years or shrink
on bone, knees knobbing
into wind, last probes
of day. Women murmur,
cull words from brine,
sigh until they're sated,
surf-hushed in dusk's
first breath. Soon, dark
will come. They will stand,
gather belongings, plod
gray sand and dunes
back to their Harleys,
campers and tents. Soon,
but still they sit or lie, eyes
seaward, empty moons--
no thoughts of leaving,
no thoughts at all.
Justin's poem "On the Phone with Kansas" appears in the poetry collection What Matters (Jacar Press, 2013) and his poem "Half-Light" in Pinesong (North Carolina Poetry Society, 2013). He was also published three years in a row in Main Street Rag's Kakalak ("Requiem in Wide Open Minor" in 2013, "Baseball" in 2014, and "Who Looks for You" in 2015).
Submissions open until June 30, 2016
