Treadmill Trackstar Southern Gothic Poetry Contest

The Treadmill Trackstar Southern Gothic Poetry Contest

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CONGRATULATIONS TO KENDAL TURNER!

winner of the Treadmill Trackstar / undefined Magazine

Southern Gothic Poetry Contest!

Kendal’s amazing poem Ghosts will be published in an upcoming issue of Undefined Magazine

Kendal Turner is a Southern born, Yankee educated, poet and spoken word artist from Columbia, SC. She is a member of the VerseWorks Poetry Series as well as the emcee for Columbia Alternacirque. A bit of a trouble maker, though always a lady, she believes in the power of artistic expression and that most bad situations are made better with ice cream.

THE WINNING POEM!:

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Ghosts

by Kendal Turner

Someone fought for this, do you remember?

Daddy tucking you in and night,

swirling your dreams with a touch on the forehead, as

mother rocked your fever into submission.

The kiss behind the swing set in elementary

school that lit your tiny heart on fire. The first

time you said “I love you” and meant it.

The first time you said “I’m leaving” and

didn’t look back.

Hold me like breath until my lungs burst and I

tell you the mystery behind family photographs.

Muses passed from parents seep into

cooking and the way we carry our fishing poles.

Tattoos of ghosts filling our skin with ancestral messages,

oujia board proclamations that Yes, we can hear you. We

follow your footsteps daily and are proud that you

learned from our mistakes and added your own twist.

Don’t let our memory haunt you. Use it as a guide to

direct though the mountains of life, a pathway

in the dark unknown.

The eyes carry the family bible, pages

formed from the family tree, a religion

of where we came from and where we are going.

Finality is fictional misdirection that makes us

live fast and hard. The truth, a slow river, which takes

pause in the body before pouring around the afterlife.

80 years is nothing in the timetable of forever.

When our spirits unwrap the

package of skin we’ll use heaven as a landing pad.

Stars stuck in teeth from driving around this universe like

we have no where to go and forever to get there.

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Kendal Receives the following Prizes:

• Winning poem or short story will be published in Undefined Magazine.
• Winning poem or short story set to music in song form, or as a reading scored and recorded by Treadmill Trackstar.
• Winning poem will be featured at treadmilltrackstar.com on the Treadmill Facebook Fan Page
• Winning author will receive copy of Treadmill Trackstar’s ‘Southern Gothic’ CD (limited pressing)
• Winning author invited to read their at the release concert for Southern Gothic

Treadmill Trackstar is a not for profit band interested in music for music’s sake. No band member ever receives any money from concerts, merchandise or anything else. All funds go toward recording the next project. Our hope is that we can keep making records in this way for years to come with creative and collaborative projects like this one. Join us!