FPS: Lantern Light Challenge Winners
A behind-the-scenes glimpse at the Vocal Curation Team’s top picks from Lantern Light.
For this challenge, we asked you to write around one lantern and let it guide the work. The submissions were thoughtful, inventive, and full of feeling. Each poem found a different way to hold light, to keep it steady, or to let it fade just enough to make room for wonder.
🏆 Winners
The Lantern by the Door by Tim Carmichael
Tim Carmichael's piece settles you right into that lived-in kitchen, with yellowed glass, boot-scuffed floors, and quiet ritual. There’s something steady and tender in how he traces what remains after the work and the years have passed. The light feels earned, a small steady promise that still holds its place in the dark.
Augury by Corvus
Corvus pulls you straight into the storm, where longing and desperation crash together until everything blurs. The lantern feels like both rescue and ghost light, trembling at the edge of the chaos.
Junkyard by Paris Rosemont
Paris Rosemont writes with a kind of raw honesty that lands hard and stays. The images are physical and unflinching, grief and creation welded into the same space.
Pen Names by Mackenzie Davis
Mackenzie Davis captures that moment where light almost gives itself away. The images move between grace and unease, layered with quiet longing. The result is haunting in a way that doesn’t ask for attention but earns it.
Forging Hope by Amanda Starks
Amanda Starks builds a steady sense of renewal, each line turning darkness into something almost tender. The piece leaves a quiet warmth where the ache used to be.
🎖️ Runners-up
- n o c t i s by Kristen Balyeat
- What if by Sonia Heidi Unruh
- Mary’s Non-optional Lovelight Continuum by The Dani Writer
- Lamplighter of Lost Dreams by Maggie Mahogany
- Beware by Christa Leigh
- By Design by Caladrius
- LLLLight by Lindsay Shiner Packard
- luminous by Hannah Moore
- The Mercenary Lantern by John R. Godwin
- Rebirthing by Marilyn Glover
- when all the stars are gone by angela hepworth
- I Haunt Your House by Tyler C Clark (he/they)
- When My World Was Dark by Daniel K
- My Flame by Cristal S.
- A Bolivian Lantern Dreams by Michele Nampalli
🏅 Honorable Mentions
- The Streetlamp in Paris, Near Passage Dauphine by Teresa Renton
- The Way by Shannon Dalley
- An Elegy, in Loving Memory of Camp Lanterns by Sam Spinelli
- Against A Navy Sky by Gabriel Huizenga
- small fire by Emily Ryan
- Ode to the Canari by River and Celia in Underland
- Soft-Shelled Egg by Kara Lu
- Orange Tango by Oscar Richard
- Moth Boy by J. R. Lowe
- Last light by Wren H
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By Vocal Curation Team3 months ago in Resources
Let's Don't Do This
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By Shirley Belk4 days ago in Fiction
Comments (28)
Well done everyone 🦋🏆🦋♦️♦️♦️♦️♦️
Congratulations, everyone! Can't wait to read all the submissions.
Congrats everybody! Super excited to get more involved with the poets community
Bravo to all the winners and runner ups! Keep your head up to everyone else who submitted. May you keep a continual poetry flow. #seeyouintheflow
Condragulations
Well done to everyone… especially the place getters.🤩
Cheers to all the fine winners and those who entered! Even if you don't score the win, you accepted the experience of the challenge itself which is a reward of its own right! YaY!
Condragulations everyone!
Congrats to all! Wow! So many beautiful lines! Thank you, Vocal!! G r a t e f u l! 🙏🏽🩷✨
Nice
Everyone on Vocal always does amazing, beautiful work. I am bewildered, but so, so honored. Congrats to all of the winners in this contest, and thank you for the privilege of being among them.
Congratulations to everyone! 🎉💖🎊🎉💖🎊
Congratulations, everyone! These poems are absolutely exquisite.
If you guys could hear how much I'm screaming with joy in my house right now...hahaha! Thank you so so much for my first win, Vocal Team! And thank you to the amazing people who read, liked, and commented. You guys seriously make writing on this platform such a joy! And a huge congrats to my fellow winners! This challenge was so open ended; I saw a lot of creativity in all these entries. I will need to go back through and give my support!
Congratuations to all!!!
Congratulations everyone🥳🥳
Congratulations everyone♦️😊♦️
congratulations!!
Thank you so much for selecting my poem as a winner in this challenge and also for your kind words and reflections. Very much appreciated! 🥰 🙏 Congratulations to all 🥳🙌💖
congratulations to everyone! Took me awhile, but I just got done reading and acknowledging every piece that won! Great job to all :D
Nice, well done.
Congratulations all! 🥳🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Wow, thanks Vocal! Congratulations to everyone!
Congratulations to all the winners and writers.
Congratulations everyone