The 2022 “Prime 53 Poem” Summer Challenge
In the spring of 2019, Press 53 poetry editor Christopher Forrest and publisher Kevin Morgan Watson created a new poetry form, the Prime 53 Poem, which has a total of 53 syllables: three stanzas of three lines each with a syllable count of 7/5/3 and a final two line stanza with a syllable count of 5/3, for a total of 53 syllables. The stanzas must adhere to a rhyme pattern of a/b/a; c/d/c; e/f/e; g/g.
Each summer, from June 1 to July 31, we ask writers to send us their Prime 53 Poems and Press 53 poetry editor Christopher Forrest selects his four favorite poems to share with our readers. There is no cost to enter and the winners each receive a free book from Press 53.
This year’s winners are:
“Rock Girl and Her Summer Gold” by Amy Pontius
“Brother of the Hearse” by Eric Weil
Amy Pontius
of Fort Myers, Florida
“Rock Girl and Her Summer Gold”
Free book from Press 53:
Dragonfly. Toad. Moon. by Mary Jane White
Rock Girl and Her Summer Gold
Her eyes, shimmering brook trout,
catch the light as she
lifts one out—
smooth river rock—from water
cool as mountain air.
Granddaughter,
sparkle collector, nature
girl who pockets earth’s
gifts to her
lest they slip away
with the day.
~ ~ ~
Amy Pontius is a former educator who resides in southwest Florida and vacations in northern Vermont. Her work has been published in Kaleidoscope™ Reflections on Women’s Journeys: In My Shoes. In addition to her print publication, she was awarded both winner and runner up status for contests by Kaleidoscope WoJo™. Inspired by nature and beautiful locations, Amy enjoys attending the writers’ conferences on Kauai and Sanibel Island, FL to help hone her craft.
Eric Weil
of Raleigh, North Carolina
“Brother of the Hearse”
Free book from Press 53:
Bodies in Motion by Joseph Mills
Brother of the Hearse
At a traffic light I look
across the pavement:
a tow truck
hauls a crumpled, totaled car.
The windshield bulges—
head-shaped scar.
The light changes, the truck starts,
brother of the hearse
that takes hearts
across the river
for ever.
~ ~ ~
Eric Weil lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. His poems have won awards from The Greensboro Review, North Carolina Poetry Council, Poetry Society of North Carolina, Kakalak, and North Carolina Literary Review and have appeared in journals ranging from American Scholar to Poetry, Dead Mule to Sow's Ear, and Silk Road to Main Street Rag. He has three chapbooks in print: A Horse at the Hirshhorn, Returning from Mars, and Ten Years In. Eric is also a playwright; his short plays have seen the stage in Florida, Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Minnesota, as well as in North Carolina.
Pilar Dib
of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil
“The new conqueror”
Free book from Press 53:
Tales the Devil Told Me by Jen Fawkes
The new conqueror
worm writhes to the center of
the stage amidst cheers.
Lights go off.
This brief tragedy is Man
whose blood oozes from
vermin fangs.
It's a play of wildfires,
disease, nuclear
satire.
Take your seat and see
how we bleed.
~ ~ ~
Pilar Dib was born in 1994 in Argentina and then moved to Brazil in 2001. Growing up, she thought she would become a writer or a lawyer. After a change of heart, she settled for chemical engineering and is now pursuing a PhD in Bioenergy. She writes whenever she gets bored of her Excel spreadsheets.
Robert Schultz
of Salem, Virginia
“On the James Webb Space Telescope”
Free book from Press 53:
Dragonfly. Toad. Moon. by Mary Jane White
ON THE JAMES WEBB
SPACE TELESCOPE
Now that the thing’s a million
miles away, new worlds
in billions
arrive from billions of years
before there was Earth.
Its mirror
shows us the face of something
we find hard to name,
a something
behind a shut door,
now ajar.
~ ~ ~
Robert Schultz has authored eight books in three genres and is an exhibiting artist. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Award, Cornell University's Corson Bishop Poetry Prize, the Virginia Quarterly Review’s Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry, and several photography awards. He has spoken by invitation at the National Gallery of Art, Oxford University, and the U.S. Library of Congress. His collaboration with the photographer Binh Danh has produced two art exhibitions and two books, Ancestral Altars and War Memoranda: Photography, Walt Whitman, and Memorials. Schultz’s recent work includes a poetry collection, Into the New World; a photobook, Specimens of the Plague Year; and solo exhibitions: Memorial Leaves (Athenaeum Museum, Alexandria, Virginia, USA and Against the Dark, Chroma Projects “Vault” gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia). His artwork is held by the Library of Congress, museums, college and university collections, and private collectors in the U.S. and abroad. Learn more at www.robertschutz.com / @robertschultzphoto / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robert.schultz.125/