Fort Scott, Kan. — Winners of the Gordon Parks Museum Poetry Contest sponsored by Helen Townsend and
Trabar Associates, have been selected.

The theme was “What Does Your Heart See?”

A record 41 entries were received. The winner of First Place was Angele Martinez, Nevada. MO, with the poem
titled, “Shot Photo of the Heart”. Second Place was Liam-Warren Acaeron, Chicago, IL with the poem, “The
Stern of You and Me”. And Third Place was Corine Gaston. Tulsa, OK with the poem, “For Evelyn”.

There were four Honorable Mentions named:
Marissa Byers, Indianapolis, IN, with the poem titled ” Searching Seeing” Tracey Seals, Fort Scott, KS, with the poem titled, “What My Heart Sees” Aaliyah Teague, Wichita, KS with the poem titled, “The Middle Child” Raegan Neufeld, Pittsburg, KS with the poem titled, “My Home On the Prairie”

First, Second, and Third place winners received cash prizes of $200, $150, and $100 respectively.

This poetry contest is inspired by a quote from Gordon Parks, “I feel it is the heart, not the eye, that
should determine the content of the photograph. What the eye sees is its own. What the heart can
perceive is a very different matter.”

Poets were invited to capture the essence of the theme.

Judges for the photo contest were Annette Hope-Billings and Poet, Cash Hollistah.

The poetry exhibit will be
on display on the Gordon Parks Museum facebook page facebook.com/fsccgpmuseum/ and the museum’s
website gordonparkscenter.org.

Angele Martinez, Nevada. MO, with the poem
titled, “Shot Photo of the Heart”

SHOT PHOTO OF THE HEART
Click.
Not to own.
To listen.
Listen to what beats.
Silence…
then a burst !
The heart opening :
It’s the camera lens.
To look ?
No. To feel.
Before shape,
Before contour,
Before the world even knows
It exists !
The eye may take
But it is the heart that receives !
Receives what we feel,
Echoing everywhere.
Where ?
Everywhere !
In streets,
In shadows,
In faces.
To catch the ephemeral
Which is only ephemeral in the moment
Because the message itself is powerful !
To capture the world
until it passes through us !
The world,
Not seen
But touched,
Then leaving…
More complex,
More real,
Carrying the moment away.

Liam-Warren Acaeron, Chicago, IL with the poem, “The
Stern of You and Me”

THE STERN OF U & ME
From the bleak of my now, I make a U-
turn, to see what my life of art must have navigated—
like 1996, when I used to palm a K1000,
strapped around my neck, lens dangling over my chest—
my art must have eyed all the better wearer of jeans,
must have zoomed into my guitar case a few feet away
a slice of the strap that held my dad’s yashica,
my art must still see the old crevices where
plaque was once pastries and pepsi, see
the chest that bounded when I heard Dad
is dead.
my art must still see this chest that caved in and out,
late at night, when I walked to the edge of the lake waters,
I can’t swim, I walked on, my body underwater, neck above surface,
until
my feet touched sand no more. Must still see this chest
that was pushed by a mysterious wave, back to the shore, and
I lived
to change my mind about unliving.
Must still see a microcosmically bent chest from a punch
at my homeless shelter, because
I have a lot of torn power, bold or be a bell, just
compressed when I wheezed in winter from a mild pneumonia,
my life of art eyes a stable ribcage from carrying fifty-pound
groceries from pantry to Mom, unmindful
of my spine, tapped of so much burden,
crimson blood to burgundy when it was 92 degrees
of walking miles from my Skokie Village to Howard train station.
Just now, I heart that there were once chiefs who met eagles
just to raid the future for a bow.
Just now, a goose and a car honk before the oncoming traffic
of snowstorm, to oversee this memo
that I am still a hull, for better shots,
between my stern and your meadow.

Corine Gaston,Tulsa, OK with the poem, “For Evelyn”.

For Evelyn
We used to walk and say hello to the trees,
the creeping phlox, the rockpools
She taught me how to hold my thumb
as a perch for the monarchs
Migrating through the pine barrens
and on and on over the tea-colored lake
I see a picture of the park with the chain-link fence
She points: I chased off boys
Throwing their shoes over the powerlines
And the forest is falling through me again.
Then one summer, she lay in hospice
and called out to god, her thin body all pain.
She held my hand tight in her grip
and when she was ready to go, she let go.
The morning light shined on
like it was any other day.
There was moss on the magnolia.
Clouded moonlight lifting its cloth from the tide
It brought me to my knees–my grandmother’s body
without my grandmother.
We buried her in a box and
slid the coffin into a granite wall.
She loved butterflies and dogwoods,
Dipping one hand in the rockpool
Watching the seaplanes through a lens–
Watching a single star bleeding white against blue
As if she said I’ve had enough of this earth.
Let me be reborn with one foot on the sky.