Each season one poem from the submitted works is selected by the editor. The winning poet receives a $50 cash prize and their poem is published on our website as well as in the print edition of the Frost Meadow Review.
Spring/Summer 2023
Teacher’s Prayer
by Jonny Bolduc
please, god. let the hot water in the trailer turn on, suddenly, like a river flooding a bank. let the nirvana hoodie that reeks of cat piss be washed with fresh detergent. let these kids know some kindness. let these kids know someone holding a laundry basket to their hips as they walk to the washer. let these kids have coats to shield them from the harsh wind. let these kids have pepperoni pizza birthday parties and let these kids know the touch of someone who loves them. let these kids memorize the wrinkles in someone’s face, really remember how they talked, how they shuffled a deck of cards, what they said when they stubbed a toe. let these kids have someone they remember, someone they could write a poem about, someone who loves them enough to put them first. please let the kids have someone who doesn’t give a fuck if they get a B minus on an essay if it keeps them alive. please let these kids have someone who doesn’t call them a “pussy,” someone who lets them have green hair, someone who keeps them like a child should be kept safely, like a flame clutched in a palm, not a match struggling to stay lit on a cold night. please let these kids please let these kids please let these kids
Fall/Winter 2022
Desire as Peach Wine
By Hanna Webster
Eyelashes graze my flushed cheeks as she moves to kiss me we’re tangled on a porch couch this cushioned heat like pomegranate juice running down forearms pink tongues no match for the stains which trace our elbows delicious proof of our sins in her mouth, I am catching my breath what sweeter way should I pass the time of these long and sweltering days? I giggle into her chest my grandfather speaks of boys and girls could not fathom this gaze between us or the night I kissed my way down her to him, I don’t divulge unorthodox admissions but I might still hold her hand, and tip the thermos of peach wine toward the sky, for her, quenching, sweating, as if we have never known love before this night.
Spring/Summer 2022
An Old Friend
By Thomas Hannah
I awoke to you dancing with the morning rain In that shirt of mine you borrowed the night before The one you said was ugly & not worth wearing But you were beautiful still & slept in it anyway We’d been out to that new Italian place in town You said It was okay but your cooking was better But the wine was nice & we drank much of it I felt weightless & tipped the waiter above my means & told our cab driver you just agreed to marry me You only blushed & said for me to shut up I grinned & said surely that day would come You smiled & said for me to shut up. & with you in my shirt & my arms we slept until we woke I at peace with the rain falling with the rising dawn & you a devil may care angel dancing barefoot in the puddles I watched you & your wet hair throwing diamonds Your body’s perfect pirouettes In love with your lust for life I watched you Through my window From your pillow & with the sun still smothered by the grey You were the only rainbow worth waiting for. I watched you in a daydream thinking, If this girl’s made of watercolour What a masterpiece.
Fall/Winter 2021
Owl’s Head State Park
By Jenn Carter
Sometimes being a mama is a like being a lighthouse
A beacon
Sometimes a clear day
A safe harbor
A shore to land upon
We pull into the parking lot at Owl’s Head,
A hot summer day, just you and me,
Glowing after a swim at Birch Point.
You say, “Oh. I don’t like this one.”
I say, “I know. We need to take it back.”
Sometimes mothering is a red sky
A churning sea
A rocky coast
A lost ship praying for light to cut through the dark
I remember holding you in this car,
In this parking lot, as you screamed,
And hit, and bit me,
As you told me you wished I would die,
That you could die,
As I tallied all the reasons you have to be angry…
I wonder what you remember.
“Come on,” I say.
Twelve years ago, my world ended
My life began again
We climb together to the lighthouse,
Tell jokes, take selfies,
Buy a tiny glass walrus in the gift shop,
Hold hands on the path back to the car.
Let memory be a lighthouse,
The first sight of land
After a hard journey,
Its beam the shape of forgiveness
Spring/Summer 2021
Turning Right with Posie By Mary Tracy At the next corner of this field Posie will ask to drive my car and I’ll have to check her license and she won’t have it on her because she’s a piglet and doesn’t wear clothes with pockets. So I’ll buckle her in beside me in my Ford Falcon station wagon because she cries if I put her in the back where she is all alone. Posie tells me she has a secret about where we are going. I raise my eyebrow, but I don’t say Yeah, right, because I love secrets and I really want to know where I’m going. At the next corner, she says, Turn right, not wrong, and I look at this little pigsqueak beside me and raise my other eyebrow. But I turn my car right and the field becomes the ocean and the car becomes a boat. And we laugh and laugh because neither of us knows anything about boats or sailing or rules of the sea.
Fall/Winter 2020
The Red Tail By Daniel Barbare The Hawk With Studious Eye Enjoys His Catch Beneath The Maple Tree.
Spring/Summer 2020
Torquemada By Sheila Wellehan I fielded so many questions and comments from strangers about my dog Guthrie on our long daily walks, during his journey from older to ancient, from thin to visible bones. Most were kind. He looks wonderful! What a trooper! He’s so happy to be here – what a smile! Some were thoughtless. Are you sure he doesn’t have cancer? Should he be walking? Shouldn’t you keep him inside? One curious walker stood out from the others, sharp-eyed, intense, and direct. He was there every trip we made to Mackworth Island. I couldn’t escape Torquemada. At 6’ 4”, he towered over most pedestrians. I guessed it was Parkinson’s that kept his pace strained and slow. His unlikely companion was a miniature poodle, as fluffy and bubbly as he was thin and severe. For years, we nodded silently at one another. Then one hot August morning he pointed at Guthrie and said, Thank God, I’m finally faster than someone. I’m not the slowest one on the island anymore. Next time it was, He’s lost weight. How long does the vet give him? On Veteran’s Day, I guess you’re waiting for a natural death. I tried to avoid him and outwalk him. Guthrie grew slower and he always caught up. The Grand Inquisitor spent more time resting on benches that look out onto Casco Bay. I stopped dreading his interrogations when he told me near Christmas, The vet probably wants to put your dog down. Don’t do it! He’s still got a lot of love to give. Guthrie died on the coldest day of deep winter. I returned to the island three weeks later, looking forward to the old man grilling me on grim details most people don’t want to know – but the island’s two slowest walkers were running elsewhere. I never saw Torquemada again.
Fall/Winter 2019
Samhain Sister* by Muriel Allen I was born on Wednesday the end of October— a fright to a family who hoped to forget. Was I a throwback to widows too clever? My parents would say, “keep your profile low.” “be careful out there. don’t laugh too loud. don’t look too smart.” But when the wind tugs at the branches of trees and gutters fill with splotches yellow and red, when the door to the other worlds is ajar, it feels right to bring out my cape and hat, I summon up a stew to serve to my sisters long gone. We enjoy a merry cackle, a reading of the cards before we part. Then I go for a midnight walk for no one thinks twice to see a woman out tonight accompanied by her cat. On Halloween you can be whatever you want, whoever you are *Samhain (pronounced sou'win) is an ancient Celtic celebration for the beginning of winter, a precursor to our Halloween and still honored by Wiccans. I am a descendant of some of those accused in Salem, in our case, a warlock, his wife and daughter.
Spring/Summer 2019
Baxter by Lynne Schmidt The first thing I tell people when I meet them is that my dog is dead. The dog lover's jaws drop. They tuck me in their arms, and smother me in similar stories. They say, Oh I'm so sorry. I lost mine at x y and z years old. Then there are others, who look at me like he was just a dog. Just eleven years of an otherwise incomplete and unremarkable life. That his absence in my bed shouldn't matter because here's a man to share the mattress with. And yet. They weren't there when my mother came and said, pack your bags We have twenty four hours. Or when after these hours came, we left my sister's clothes, and picture frames, and went to a house where a man passed out at the table during my soap opera. They weren't there during the summer I considered suicide because I couldn't make sense of this life or what comes next. And then I met a puppy in a parking lot, and suddenly soccer made sense. Suddenly, the broken puzzle pieces fit more tightly together, and I was no longer colorblind. I knew what sunlight felt like, why the world is on an axis and how it spins. And yet, my dog is dead. The one who curled around me when I sobbed on a couch because he felt a heartbeat in me that wasn't my own. And I didn't want it there. But the churches I was raised in, seeking shelter from abuse and alcohol told me that removing it was a sin. And so my child is dead. And my dog is dead. Because I wasn't sure I could make it down the stairs. The one who caught me when my foot slipped on a peg And tumbled me downward. I should have been hurt. Twisted an ankle at the very least. But my dog, that you tell me was just a dog, caught me, comforted me, put my legs beneath me when I was ready to jump. When I was ready to crash. When my friends told me the only difference between my driving and my driving under the influence was how fast I go. And so I asked for him to have another ride home. And so now, My dog is dead. Because cancer riddled his bones and though I became clockwork with medications, gloves, appointments, pulling funds from inside my body to outside, he fell from my car, on the way to work. And I screamed loud enough the construction workers heard me and came running. I told them I had a magical pill, because I was told to believe this. But I was also told that I was only buying time. And so my dog is dead. Because on his last day, he laid in bed when I asked if it was time to go to work. And he ate treats from my hand as he fell asleep. And the Starbucks barista held me as I cried. So. My dog is dead. And I don't understand how the earth keeps spinning.
Fall/Winter 2018
Petrichor by Richard Foerster Six storm-wet buzzards wait among dead boughs of an ancient pine, their ruffs plumped like Flemish collars to shield naked rose-pink heads; lumpish, brown, they hide inside themselves, honing patience as an art. Wrapped in windless gray, what is resurrection to them if not the day brightening to its usual interplay of shadows and light? Soon all six will lift wide their wings, let them hang like linens on a line, shedding a weight that would forestall their rise into sun-warmed currents, the scent they know so well, that rich decay which we mistake for attar and greedily inhale.