2024 Lyrical Iowa Haiku Contest

     Michael Dylan Welch, judge

First Place

quiet snowstorm

the muted colors

of a barn quilt

Mary Ann Conley, Marion, Iowa

Such gentleness in this poem, despite the storm. Barn quilts are not quilts that one could warm you in bed or on a couch. Rather, they’re bright geometric patterns painted onto barns, an Americana folk art. The gentle snowfall is muting the painting’s normally vibrant-looking colors, and yet the painting can still be seen, a beacon of brightness and creativity. We can hope that this barn is seen from a safe place indoors, perhaps under a cozy quilt.

Second Place

maple

turning

red

sky

at

night

Del Todey Turner, Waterloo, Iowa

A change of season and a change of weather. The word “red” operates as a pivot in this poem, as part of the phrases “maple turning red” and “red sky at night.” The vertical arrangement of the words helps to facilitate this twist of meaning. As the saying goes, a red sky at night is a sailor’s delight (meaning good weather in the morning), and perhaps the maple’s color change also suggests a positive autumn and holiday season ahead.

Third Place

hometown Thanksgiving:

we laugh together

as adults

Angela McGlothlen, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

It’s another family gathering at Thanksgiving, but this one comes with a realization that siblings (as I see this poem) are now adults—or acting as adults even if they had already been adults for a while but hadn’t acted that way. This poem is at once buoyant and melancholy.

First Honorable Mention

chinaberry fire

early morning’s

brilliant light

Julie Allyn Johnson, Norwalk, Iowa

If you’re not familiar with chinaberry, it’s worth looking it up online to see images of its refined and fragrant flowers. Their energy matches the morning light’s brilliance.

Second Honorable Mention

covered bridge

clinging for dear life

honeysuckle

Shelly Reed Thieman, West Des Moines, Iowa

I see this honeysuckle as overgrowing the bridge in some way, but that might not be the case. If it is, the honeysuckle may not be as old as the bridge, but it seems old enough to have become heavy, threatening to fall from the bridge on which it might be growing. But not yet! And perhaps that honeysuckle is helping to keep the old bridge up.

Third Honorable Mention

smell of fresh-cut hay

permeates my evening walk

Iowa summer

Bryan Tabbert, Osage, Iowa

The smell of hay is bound to make every Midwesterner nostalgic. How pleasing to experience this familiar and perhaps comfortable smell on a summer evening.

Additional Selections

breathe in

trumpeter swans

sound the year

Angela Evans, Johnston, Iowa

The first line here may seem to be an instruction, but it’s also an action, not just breathing in a breath but breathing in the sound of those swans, perhaps at the start of a new year.

watched by a cold moon

third-generation angler

on the Aegean

Roberta Beach Jacobson, Indianola, Iowa

We are transported from the prairie to the sea east of Greece. Perhaps the poet now lives in the Midwest and is also seeing that same moon, remembering family heritage.

rustle of bamboo

outside my mother’s kitchen

the sounds of mourning

Patricia E. Noeth, Iowa City, Iowa

The distinctive sound of rustling bamboo does have the sound of mourning, doesn’t it? It’s possible to imagine that the mother here has passed away.

A lone saxophone

Softly plays in the moonlight

Midnight in Harlem

Sarah Ann Meeker, Ottumwa, Iowa

wings caught in web

struggle

to nowhere

Virginia Mortenson, Des Moines, Iowa

after a glimmer

between darkness and dreaming

the mist disappears

Craig Running, Decorah, Iowa

four-week-old kitten

tumbles ’round the sun-drenched porch

chasing its shadow

William Dall, Dubuque, Iowa

A farmer

tosses wheat seed in fields

black birds

Virginia K. Westbrook, Des Moines, Iowa

daybreak calm

loon skimming sapphire lake

vanishes

Janvier Abramowitz, Coralville, Iowa