First Place – Jordan Hartt

     My mother dealt with Dean’s absence by cleaning. Every rainy morning she got up early to survey the house and, no matter how spotless it looked, at least to me, she would tug chemical sprays from underneath the sink and roll the sleeves of her flower print shirts up to her strong elbows. On weekends, if I lingered too long in the kitchen, she dropped a bottle of bleach in my hand and sent me out to the driveway to kill the moss that grew up through the cracks in our driveway. There, I would pretend I was a Chinook helicopter, flying over Viet Cong positions, dropping napalm onto enemy villages, re-enacting battle scenes that I read in my brother’s letters, or saw on the evening news, which I watched with my father. I’d sit cross-legged – we still called it Indian style, back then – in front of my father’s easy chair watching the boxy television, as the early-evening westerns – pistols firing into pine forests, stealthy Indians, blank-faced cowboys on horseback – seamlessly became, after dinner, footage of the war: M-16's firing into dense jungle, stealthy Viet Cong, and gray, blank-faced helicopters.

     Second Place – Magdalen Powers

     Third Place – Janis Butler Holm

The winner of third place in the tpotd writing competition, Janis Butler Holm, chose to reserve publication here of her paragraph so that it may be revised and possibly included in a longer work.

     Honorable Mention – Molly Ritvo

     My mother is a quiet woman who speaks softly. She has graying hair and walks in faint steps around our home as if she is afraid she will crack the floor. Her hands don’t have the heavy quality that my father’s have. My father works in a glove factory. His hands are rough and dry from the constant hauling of boxes up on the conveyor belt. Once my father’s friend got his index finger chopped off because he didn’t remove his hand in time. My mother’s hands are timid as they rest in her lap after dinner while she watches the ocean wave softly to her in the moonlight. The ocean is quiet and gray and still most of the time, even on blistering hot days when tourists come from cities and sit on their big, colorful towels. My mother believes in the mystery of the ocean. She believes that our souls pass on to rest in those waters after departing from this earthly land. Before I go to school, I see her looking at the ocean through the dew on the window panes and listening to the whispers of the wind and the sighs of the water washing over the jagged rocks. I let my eleven year old mind imagine what my mother thinks about in those hushed moments because she doesn’t tell me.

     Honorable Mention – Charlene Finn

     Resting a moment by her garden, Kate saw the pickers arriving for hire, coming up the lane from the county road. More were behind them. A crowd. Children of all sizes dashed ahead of the adults carrying bundles in both hands or balanced on their shoulders. A few women kept pace with their men. Some women clustered together, talking in quick, easy Spanish. Their sound seemed to rise out of the trees. Shades of brown and cinnamon, faces, bare forearms, legs beneath skirts, mostly Mexican, or Mexican-American and a few Anglos in the group. Two pickups – Chevys – coming from behind, pumped the horn to nudge the walkers from the road, forcing them into the orchard where the trees broke their gatherings apart. One pickup after the other pulled into whatever space between the trees they could find to park. Pick-up beds were jammed with people. So many Kate couldn’t recognize anyone. Already the children were leaping out, the younger ones reaching to be handed down to outstretched arms. Once on the ground, they were cautioned by the adults – don’t move. For a moment, the kids listened, then they were off, scattering like goats through the trees. She had envied these kids when she was young, mistaking what she thought they had as freedom.