2024 Poetry Award Winner: Leonardo Chung

Paper Boats

In a wished life, my mornings open
not with the jolt of an alarm
but with the rustle of pages turning softly.
In the margins of old books
where coffee spills are constellations,
and cigarette burns stain chapters.

The unnoticed writer at the corner booth,
scribbling on diner receipts—
words, ephemeral as the waitress's 
smile, or the amora of burnt toast,
lingering in the air, forgotten by noon.

In that world, every line I write
maps the contours of a face not seen,
traces the arc of a stranger’s laugh.
I send my words out like paper boats
on puddles formed by spring rains,
lifelines thrown into the water,
rippling away to the shore.

My fingers, smudged with the graphite of twilight,
sketch out lines,
drawing bridges over rivers.
I whisper to the wind,
and it carries me up into the trees,
where I nest among birdsong
and the secrets of sparsest branches.

I see myself there—older, 
reflected in the shop window 
that frames a world written in reverse. 
Alone, yet not lonely, with the mismatched souls 
that collect sunsets, and flickering streetlights 
as chapter in the anthology.

We chase the words of streetlights flickering.

When I walk back through the crowded streets
of this choice,
where my days are structured, not scripted,
I recognize a different form—
not in the words I write,
but in the life I stitched myself.

& I wonder—
the narrative that itches more:
the one I lead
                                       or the one I draft in daydreams?
decisions : lines :: days : stanzas;
unspoken, yet resonating,
in the quiet afterthoughts of dusk.

At Her Grave
 
You lay flowers gently, a bouquet
of stems whispering. The silence
kneading its grassy dough
like a grandmother, violet petals pressing 
             to the surface. A lone Tic Tac nestled 
in the daffodils as the roots of irises
drink our sadness. Our fingernails 
             crescent the orchids, a firework’s echo
             fading into the sun. Entwined
in the stems of lilies—
a Starbucks cup,
             a water bottle cap
buried in the earth beneath the roses,
                  a worn glove
tucked inside the marigolds. Captured
in the tulips, a broken watch
             hidden within the hyacinths,
                  a letter’s ink
seeped into the gardenias’
                  petaled folds, petrichor
             drifting through the dandelions.
A single sigh of relief cradled
             by the chrysanthemums,
                                        grandma’s secret promise
             to remember, wrapped 
                   around the sunflowers, a heartbeat
thumping in the peonies.
 
At her grave, you lay flowers gently, a bouquet
             like a library of whispers.
A bouquet is a box of leaves
pressed, veins protruding. Of dried flowers.
                              Of keepsakes, each petal a photograph.

The Riddle

On a street painted with the steps 
	of the hurried and the dreaming, I am
        a whisper among shouts.

                A child's laughter bursts like a bubble in the air,
        spiraling into memories drenched 
        in the beach’s splashing light.

An old man perches, a storybook on a bench, his face
        etched with tales as deep as tree rings, padding
                his worn trails.
        The love he knew, now simmering—
        tea leaves in the evening calm.

A woman darts by the bench—her conversation 
		a string of pearls lost to the wind. She wavers
        on a tightrope of her own making.
        Squeezing lemons into her schedule, I see her

spinning gold from its straw. Beneath
        the canopy stretching its arms wide, roots
crochet stories into cobblestones.

         Each passerby—a brushstroke on the easel, easily
                 missed. Pale faces
glow in the artificial light, living
         novels unfolded before them.

A footnote in the epic of the street, I bear
	witness to the living scarves unwinding, each world
        whipping around its own axis, forever
                 a riddle, as we are to them.

Leonardo Chung is a Korean American writer from Illinois. He recently placed in the 2025 Yeats Poetry Prize, won first place for nonfiction in the 93rd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, and was a finalist for the 2024 Witness Literary Awards for poetry. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Epiphany, Portland Review, Atlanta Review, Sweet Lit, and many others. He takes inspiration from distinguished poets such as Langston Hughes, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Louise Glück.

3 July 2025