Writer’s Digest 94th Annual Competition Winning Non-Rhyming Poem: “Charring Lemons”

Congratulations to Alison Luterman, grand-prize winner of the 94^th Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition. 

(See the list of winners here.)

Alison Luterman’s five books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life, See How We Almost Fly, Desire Zoo, In the Time of Great Fires, and Hard Listening. She also writes plays, song lyrics, and personal essays. She has taught at New College, The Writing Salon, Catamaran, Esalen, and Omega Institutes, and writing workshops around the country, as well as working as a California poet in the schools for many years.

Here's her winning non-rhyming poem, "Charring Lemons."

February, and those fat yellow

knobby-nippled grenades

are dropping from everyone's backyard tree,

to be kicked around like little hockey pucks,

or left to rot in tall grass.

One neighbor fills a cardboard box

with precious Meyers and sets it,

as an offering, on the sidewalk.

Another leaves a bag on my doorstep--

Take, take, m'ija, my tree is bursting!

And I remember walking

in the Berkeley hills decades ago

with my first husband who was not yet

my husband, gaping at all the front lawns.

Look, a lemon tree! Another one!

Fresh out of Boston, naive as a new puppy.

Everything in this golden state

was a wonder to me, not least

the boy-man on my arm

with his black curls and high-wire heart.

What did I know then of fire and flood,

mudslides or earthquakes?

Oh, to be twenty-five and free

from even the thought of disaster,

to be so simply dazzled by a tree

heavy with fruit in the heart of winter!

That was our first year together,

when everything was still possible.

Before the marriage collapsed

under our feet like a beautiful building

not built to code. Well now he's dead

and I'm old, and standing over a hot skillet,

charring lemons—a trick I learned

on the Internet—blackening them just enough

to bring out the hidden sugars.

Hold anything over the fire

for a few minutes or a lifetime

and it turns into smoke.

Get recognized for your writing. Find out more about the Writer's Digest family of writing competitions.