The Unnecessary Line Challenge Winners

Poems usually move with purpose. Each line pulls its weight through rhythm, image, or meaning. For The Unnecessary Line, writers were asked to break that expectation once and leave the break alone.

The pieces below let the tension stay. Instead of explaining the stray line, they simply live with it.

🏆 Winners

Seventh Sunday, Ordinary Time by Raistlin Allen

Raistlin Allen drops an AMBER alert into the middle of a quiet morning at the park, and its blunt, factual tone lands hard against the speaker’s slow climb out of winter.

Revelations Await by John R. Godwin

John R. Godwin lets a memory of his uncle dancing drunk in his underwear with a teddy bear crash into an otherwise reverent landscape.

Willow Dome by Ian Lund

Ian Lund lets a chilling warning land inside the soft work of weaving willow branches, and it sits there, sharp and unexplained.

Groundhog Day, 4 AM by Kate Kastelberg

Kate Kastelberg builds a mythic landscape and then inserts a 911 dispatcher’s request, shifting the poem from ritual to emergency without ever reconciling the two.

love letter (to my dog) by Amber Grace

Amber Grace keeps the voice sweet and devoted until a sudden question about whether someone else has come back slips in, hinting at a presence just outside the frame that’s never explained.

🎖️ Runners-up

• Saturday by Aaron Morrison
• The Wind is Surely Asking Something by Gabriel Huizenga
• The Left Arm's Funeral by Imola Tóth
• Oranges by Cali Loria
• The Logical Starting Place by Aubrey Rebecca
• Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside by Hannah Moore
• Zero Grace by Sam Spinelli
• The Furtive Sidling by Edward Swafford
• Sometimes I Do Be Like A Firecracker by Kelli Sheckler-Amsden
• The Looking Glass Self by Morgana
• Of All Things by ROCK aka Andrea Polla (Simmons)
• Intoxication by Harper Lewis
• cosmic reverie by Lamar Wiggins
• Pressing Pause by Matthew Batham
• Lost in Reverie by Sandy Gillman

🏅 Honorable Mentions

• WARNING: Red Pens in Use by Polite Adjacent
• My Sensual Sultana by Lightning Bolt ⚡
• The Omission of Verse 21 by Caitlin Charlton
• Through The Looking Glass by Alexa
• THiCKER THAN THiEVES by jAKE RiCHARDSON
• The F Word by Bride of Sound
• A Healthy Dose of Self-Doubt by Julie Lacksonen
• Uneasy by Judey Kalchik
• Hold The Sky Without Falling by Lana V Lynx
• Memories of a Daughter of Narcissists by Moon Desert

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