First Place:

Call Me Rose, Honey, She'd Croon

She was sweet-smellin', her tattoos the old-fashioned kind, her penknife rhinestone-handled, and the truck she drove was pink. She'd let you climb into her sleeper cab and make the leather creak, make the windows steam right up, and make you cry for your mamma. She'd let you do things your wife called nasty, let you fuck her while she bit you, let you bite her till she bled, then she'd take your money and buy another straw-haired dolly with lollipop-stained lips, a frilled gingham dress and sky-wide dart frog eyes. The one thing she'd never do is call you Daddy.

Second Place:

A Letter to Dad about the Bees and the Crickets

By David  Klotzkin

Dear Dad,

The bees know where their next meal is coming from. They got their money honey stashed inside, protected by the Bee Department of Defense and their stingers. The queen runs everything. Just one poor bee gets laid every year, but otherwise, it’s a bloody workers’ paradise, that hive.

The crickets busk for a living. They rock their tunes joyfully into the summer nights, hook up with hot chick crickets and have a mad old time. They don’t have honey stashed away. They don’t know what could happen next.

I’m a cricket, Dad. 

I’m not going to business school.

Third Place:

Two Bushmen, a Kruger Rand and a Knife.

By Martin Tulton

The bearded man held the diamond up to the sun, turned it, nodded, flicked a coin onto the red Kalahari sand at the bushmen’s feet. 

C’hi turned the small gold disk with his bare toe. “What does this do?” The staccato clicks of the San tongue sent a hornbill flapping into the cloudless sky, honking displeasure.

X’hai shrugged, searched for the strange words. 

“Elders say long dry coming. This no use in big hot.”

The bearded man picked up the coin, put down a skinning knife, grinned.

X’hai and Chi conferred, agreed, their chattering like laughter in the torpid air.