At Long Last…It Can Be Told

The winners of the first and quite possibly the last ever Korrektiv Triolet Contest are as follows:

1st Place

Unneeded
My daughter says parthenogenesis
Engenders life in ovocytes unseeded;
Her flint eyes pierce my brown ones. ‘Incubus?!’
My daughter says. ‘Parthenogenesis
‘Needs no such mystical hypothesis.’
Mom, granite-eyed, agrees — my jest unheeded.
My daughter says parthenogenesis
Engenders life in ovocytes unseeded.

by Angelico Nguyen, Esq., OPL

Award: Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase by Arthur Quinn

2nd Place

The Naturalist and the Dogma
The source of nature’s always-being?
Divine parthenogenesis.
Found from lizards to heaven’s Queen:
The source of nature’s always-Being,
Who makes with methods byzantine.
My case in point: the genesis,
The source of nature, ‘s always being
Divine Parthenogenesis.

by Tom Tousignant

Award: Piers Plowman by William Langland 

3rd Place

Christians in Exam Room 4
They look. I lie, “Parthenogenesis.
Rare case. Call it a miracle…”
He interrupts, “What is–?”
“Birth of your savior? That was parthenogenesis.”
Wondering how he can believe this.
She’s quiet, grateful; He’s rapturous, hysterical.
Father-to-be plays with the word: “par-then-o-genesis?”
“Yep, no accident…a miracle.”

by Robert Simpson

Award: Martial’s Epigrams (trans. Gary Wills)

 4th Place

Untitled
Oh, Father – No father! Damn parthenogenesis!
Taken forever, a most precious tie.
Denied the advantages, pluses, and benefits
Of having a father! For parthenogenesis,
A book full of curses! Just pick one, for any fits.
Crying for justice, in vain do I cry.
Each Father’s Day blank – thanks to parthenogenesis,
I never can give him a most precious tie.

by Bob the Ape

Award: Baseball Haiku: The Best Haiku Ever Written About the Game (ed. Cor Van Den Heuvel and Nanae Tamura)

Honorable Mention:

“There is a kind of grief”
There is a kind of grief, begotten by parthenogenesis,
when no father paces, glowing, or passes out a cigar
to each passing stranger, pausing only to reminisce.
How great the grief inherited through parthenogenesis,

for even children know there should have been a kiss.
Ask Gaia; ask Dolly—les filles se croyaient très bizarres—
they understand the grief peculiar to parthenogenesis,
who have no fathers pacing, or pausing over glowing cigars.

By Jeb O’Brian

Award: The Odes of Pindar (trans. Richmond Lattimore)

Honorable Mention:

“Did Jobe form Jeb…?”
Did Jobe form Jeb by parthenogenesis?
A nom de plume or fictional character?
How much of Jobe’s beer is in Jeb’s piss?
Did Jobe form Jeb by parthenogenesis?

The author hits what others miss
Page after page and chapter to chapter.
Did Jobe form Jeb by parthogenesis?
A nom de plume or fictional character?

By Jonathan Potter

Award: Endpoint and Other Poems by John Updike

Winners will be recieving* their award prizes within the next week or so.

Thanks for the deep thoughts and thanks for you!

*If you have not yet done so, please send me your physical address by contacting me through email given in the comments here.