Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize

ZEN

Happiness is yet the essence of a moment--
be still for this!

Resist kaleidoscopes,
the mad twirling of colors,
and the hunter's horn.

Fleet is the moment
its essence shy
can wait forever . . .
only we die.

To submit to this contest, writers:

1. Must be over the age of 18.
2. Have a United States Postal Address (USPS). This can be a family or friend's address. If you live abroad but have a relative's USPS address, that's fine too. Some poets use their U.S. Consulate but please include someone's name as part of the address.
3. Have the ability to accept and use the reward, which is a gift card, usually a Visa gift card purchased from Kroger. This will be mailed to the USPS address that you provide. It can be used on Amazon and many websites and will come with the printed purchase receipt from Kroger.
4. Use the Submittable link below to submit to this contest. We can not accept submissions by email or by snail mail. If writers do not have an account with Submittable, it is free to set up but an account is required.
5. Electronically submit no more than three (3) original, unpublished poems in any style, length or genre but in English. These poems must be typed and submitted as a Word file. PDFS will be disqualified.
6. Pay $10 U.S. dollars by using the Submittable button at the bottom of the page by the deadline of October 1, 2025. Paypal can be used. There are no exceptions to the fee. We have other contests that are free. 
7. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but poems printed elsewhere in the U.S. will not be included in contest. We want first North American Serial Rights. Writers will need to withdraw their entire submission packet on Submittable if one is accepted and printed elsewhere. Money will not be refunded. 
8. Submittable will ask for a 40 word biography.
9. Employees of KCTCS can enter but if they win, they have to report the winning gift card total to payroll for tax purposes.

The most common edit that THRP makes for poets is shortening the bio.

We can not accept changes to the poem once it is submitted. If you would like to make changes, please withdraw your first submission and submit a new one but be advised that we may have reached our cap and that another fee will be required. All resubmissions must follow the same guidelines.

1. We will announce the 3 winners and around 2 honorable mentions before Christmas.
2. It takes up to 90 days to process the prizes, which are gift cards. These will arrive by USPS to the address provided. These are usually mailed by certified mail between Jan-March. We will contact you before mailing.
3. Each winner and honorable mention (and any other finalists we print) will receive a free copy of the Spring issue of The Heartland Review wherein they are published. This is mailed via USPS to the address provided in Submittable. Writers are responsible for updating their address in Submittable.
4. Writers can purchase more copies through Amazon. We'll send you that link when it's available and it's often in our Spring correspondence.
5. THRP retains first North American serial rights and may use the submitted material to promote The Heartland Review and website in perpetuity. Upon publication, rights return to the owner. We asked to be credited in the future.
6. THRP is not an independent press. We are subject to the governance of our college, Elizabethtown Community & Technical College, which in turn is part of a larger entity, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. As such, we are not able to enter into a legally binding agreement with our writers, but we've been doing this contest for over 20 years. Although we have hiccups from time to time, our volunteer staff is dedicated and tries to make your experience publishing with us a pleasant one.
7. We certainly welcome you to our campus literary readings. Right now we have tentatively scheduled this for April 8 or 9, 2026. Most information will be available closer to Christmas 2025.

Our timeline goals are:

Summer to Fall = submissions

Fall to Christmas = reading/judging (and we hope we're always early)

Winter = layout

Spring = March mailings

 

Frida’s Plaster Corset By Hollie Dogus

I am the opposite of backbone,

a carapace surrounding

your nakedness. Paint me

marvelous as Eden. And I can 

shelter your pain. I know—

you do not wish to be caressed 

by the likes of me. But wrap me

around your torso and watch 

the sun rise, and night fall, crisp 

as gin and ice. I can rebel too. 

These drawings in me—they 

are not tigers, or spider monkeys, 

or plumes. This cloth is not 

fabric from your mother’s 

huipil. I am your life spread out, 

your dreams hit by their own 

streetcar, the uraeus on 

the blue crown. And if you 

want to know, I am 

what makes you Nefertiti, 

not Diego’s swollen heart and 

brain of testicles. You are she 

who wears the color. I have 

carried your body long enough. 

We will not be erased. Go ahead, 

stand with one foot in the sea, 

if you dare to, your heart 

pumping blood into the sand. 

With every ounce of duty, I will 

carry you back to the blue house, 

my burden, where we will remain 

spiritual, void of hospital sheets. 

After a hot bath, I’ll kiss the skin 

above your collar bone. You are 

young and full of promise; see 

how your lungs persist, opening 

and closing, fragments 

of shrapnel from the crash still 

twinkling in your chest like stars?

 

Hollie Dugas, a New Mexico poet, has work in numerous literary journals and has won the Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize and the Heartwood Poetry Prize. Her honors include a Pushcart nomination and finalist status in the Atlanta Review's 2022 contest.

Jane by Garrett Stack

Her card opens with an apology

for arriving after the holiday season 

 

before moving on to the family down 

in Evansville, her birdfeeder, the elaborate depths

 

of snow. Then, finally, she’ll get down to it.

Colon cancer. Chemo. Colostomy bag.

 

She’s staying positive though, so far

she’s kept her hair, the old man’s been 

 

a big help with lifts to the hospital, there’s still 

wine. But enough about her.

 

She wants to know about our snow, 

if the boys are staying out of trouble,

 

if everyone is healthy and warm. 

I think she was right to start with Sorry. 

 

To tell me about her cancer via 

Christmas card. To live and die Midwestern.

 

I can see her right now, opening 

the door to face another morning 

 

then turning back for a heavier coat. 

Do you know what she’s telling herself? 

 

That if it weren’t for all this wind today, 

it wouldn’t be so goddamn cold. 

 

Garrett Stack's poetry books include Yeoman's Work (Bottom Dog Press, 2020) and Advice for the Boys (Cornerstone Press, forthcoming 2026). He is Middle Western.

Today We are Not at the Hospital by Sue Churchill

Today We are Not at the Hospital
Our friend is, in the middle of dying.
She was dying slowly before, but now,
going fast. Her beloved is there, and
he dozes while he waits for her to die.
He doesn’t want to wait for it, but this
is the inescapable waiting. He would roll
it all back, like the blanket of his body,
sleep-starved, weak and heavy--
he has been brought to where the only
thing that can be trusted is death, the death
that will never be undone, that will push
him toward the nowhere and no one of her absence,
of her eyes that won’t meet his, the skin
of her hand that his will not touch.
*.
In our house, a reprieve of uncertain
duration. We won’t contemplate
the suffering of others, the state of the world.
We open the door, step out where the air
moves around us like water, filled with its rain
of sounds: the brush of leaves against leaves,
the call of a ewe, her lamb’s reply,
the snore of the heat pump. Even
with bees and flowers gone, the air flows
with subtle smells—the leaves, the mulch,
the hay, the whiff of manure--all faded
and merged, they carry a tang distinct
from the clinical breath of alcohol, plastic,
and disinfectant. The smells and sounds
here flex and shift—we feel the drift
toward darkness in a tinge of wood smoke,
the throb of tree frogs, a fluttering
as birds go to roost in the deepening night.
This, we tell ourselves, is the real world.

 

Sue Churchill is a poet who raises sheep on Thistle's End Farm in Central Kentucky. Sue’s poems have appeared in Literary Accents, jelly bucket, and The Appalachian Review. Her chapbook, Toward the Fold was published by Workhorse Writers in 2020.

Sometimes in Fall by Matthew Spireng

Maybe a sleeve, maybe the back

of my coat, maybe my jeans

 

as I swung a leg between strands

of wire, barbed and waiting. Long ago

 

I followed my father in fall, through

woods, across boundaries strung

 

with wire, and I was caught, stuck—

or worse if I panicked and pulled, tore

 

skin or clothing I wore. Father

would come to free me with hands

 

and advice. But I never escaped

what I remember, caught

 

as we are in those moments

when something snags and holds.

ODE TO MY INNER NUN by Kaecey McCormick

        after Ross Gay

somewhere inside me my inner nun tugs 

at her dark tunic secured tight by a woolen belt 

so thick you could genuflect on it if you weren’t 

looking for bruises—she has not removed her veil 

since she was consecrated because she doesn’t want evil 

inclinations to be revealed or tangled with temptation 

(hers or mine)—she listens to music with a rosary 

tucked inside her folded hands, and if the nun in me 

sees two teenagers tilting together in the back pew 

I think, not because they scare off the widows

or tie up the priest’s tongue, but more precisely 

because she thinks it sacrilege, those restless lips 

opening and closing for that earthy pleasure 

in her sacred space, she will strike their smiles 

with her scourge—I should tell you the nun in me 

always carries a crucifix and a dove because she wants 

to forgive the world since she needs forgiving

for who knows how many unforgivable things—

like the times as a girl she’d peel off her dress 

and slip between fence posts to slide into the neighbor’s

pool or how she’d finger stolen rolls of her father’s quarters

instead of prayer beads or the spring day she snuck out 

the back door to the cemetery and spent time with the boy 

next door, naked skin steaming against the cold stones, 

while miles away her sister lay chained by tubes to a hospital bed 

sucking in a final breath, and above them Carolina wrens 

chattered and my inner nun’s eyes drifted deep as the canyon 

on the edge of which there she is right now, the nun in me—

tossing her crucifix into the chasm, flinging the dove 

up to the sky, taking off her scapular and bathing her skin

in the sun

Slow Ornithology by Jay McCoy

I thought Dad would visit as a crow. We
discussed the idea before he passed, but
I’m not sure he knew what he even was
saying. Maybe it was dementia &
the Lewy bodies – before we knew it
was, before we even knew about Lewy
Body, confined in all the grooves of grey
matter – talking out his mouth’s left side, not
him, not his mind, but his body. Before,
I bet Dad would manifest
as an iridescent corvid, so when
I saw the lady cardinal today, faded
brown, but decisive & chip chipping to
two brilliant carmine companions, I knew
she was Mother, by her grace, her attentive
disregard for me. First assuming
one of her escorts to be Dad, I could not
determine which one, seeming more kin
than husband – brother, not mate. When
I noticed the grackle, gregarious,
industrious, aside, & askew, I saw
my father. I think Dad chose the grackle
for the better. Maybe he didn’t know
the difference, or didn’t
have the words.

Not Yet, My Grandchildren Aren’t Ready by Victoria Melekian

No matter the number of fingers crossed, or the love
and bright shining hope waiting for me in the lobby,

the scooch from gurney to surgical table is a lonely journey.
Listen up, tumor (the word feels like gristle you pull

from your mouth and set discreetly on the edge 
of your dinner plate), you can take chunks of the breast

or the whole thing if you want. Heck, you can have both.
But please, leave me my liver, stay away from the brain—

your favorite haunts. I have yet to show Gracie how to
thread the old Singer, teach Jack to drive a stick shift,

take them on a grunion run. I’m not done embedding 
myself in the marrow of their sweet growing bones.