Today's Unbearable Truths

by Editor-in-Chief Mary Bast

Our Bacopa Literary Review 2015 First Place Poetry winner, Diane Stone, is a former technical writer-editor who lives on Whidbey Island north of Seattle. Her work has been published in Comstock Review, Soundings Review, Windfall, 5 AM Magazine, Rants, and other publications.

Here's Diane Stone's prize-winning poem, "Local Weather":

The weather guy points to a wall-sized map
that's slightly out of focus--green smudges
of moderate calm shift north
beside a long orange curl of turbulence.
Wedged like slobs in front of the evening news,
we wait for today's unbearable truths.
Just give us something simple, mister,
like the low this morning or when the sun will set.
We can deal with simple facts.

Dazed by the evening's jolt of crime,
we want to believe in something true as rain,
as if black hoods and body counts might, just might,
be washed away by evening showers.
It's hard to rise above our low-level doldrums
until we hear his weather blessing,
his final benediction that the coast is clear--
tonight and tomorrow too--
then we haul our bodies from the brink,
fix dinner and a second drink,
consider if the next few days will deliver
all he promised, sun, high clouds,
no disaster in the forecast,
but we won't hold him to it.

Later, submerged in moonless dark,
we turn to each other to confirm heat and cold,
grab a hand to hold.
Eventually a storm of one kind or another
will sweep away both good and evil.
Eternity alone has endless balmy weather:
winds calm, skies blue,
maybe light fog in the morning.

Submissions open until June 30, 2016

surf-hushed in dusk's first breath

by Editor-in-Chief Mary Bast

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,
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. 

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). 

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