Kakalak Anthology of Poets & Artists

BOOKSTORE
Visit Our Bookstore

In addition to the latest anthology, you’ll find all past Kakalak issues still in print.

KAKALAK 2025 ART
Original Artwork from Kakalak 2025
View Online

Visit the link “View Online” left to see the beautiful artwork chosen for Kakalak 2025 as it was originally submitted by artists.

KAKALAK 2025 ART AWARD WINNERS
COVER: Evie Chang Henderson, Waterlilies: Dance of Color
FIRST PLACE: Trish Klenow, Humility
SECOND PLACE: Eric Sbarge, Clouds in Oregon
THIRD PLACE: Heidi Mayfield Drost, Flowerpower
HONORABLE MENTION: Sarah Katherine Booze, A Wanderer’s Rest
HONORABLE MENTION: Lynn Farmer, Ageless Wonder
HONORABLE MENTION: Brenda W. Lyday, Reflections

KAKALAK 2025 POETRY AWARD WINNERS
FIRST PLACE: Louis Girón, “Down the River”
SECOND PLACE: Lisa C. Underwood, “Madonna & Child as
               Target Practice”
THIRD PLACE: Paige Gilchrist, “My 78-year-old Father Learns
               to Play Old Maid”
HONORABLE MENTION: David Dixon, “The Doctor’s Cleaning Lady”
HONORABLE MENTION: Jean McKinney, “Chasing Memory”
HONORABLE MENTION: H.R. Spencer, “I Need to Erase Ukraine”

ART SELECTED FOR PUBLICATION IN KAKALAK 2025
Mary Lautzenhiser Bellon, Heading Home
Margaret Bishop, Borkie
Sarah Katherine Booze, By the Lake
Cheryl Boyer, Daydreaming
S.L. Cockerille, By the Back Door
Debra A. Daniel, Bucket Head Horse
Judith A. Davis, Great Egret in Flight
Heidi Mayfield Drost, Green Coffee Mug & My Plant
Evelyn Eickmeyer-Quiñones, Going Toward the Light
Nadine Ellsworth-Moran, Rock Tree at Ghost Ranch
Lynn Farmer, Foshay Reflection
Evie Chang Henderson, Wolf Moon Rising
Patrica A. Joslin, Blue-footed Boobies at Fernandina Island
Paul Karnowski, I Saw the Letters X and O
James Kasperek, Path of Enlightenment
Trish Klenow, Life
Michael Loderstedt, Garden City House
Drake McFadyen, Grandad’s Tractor
Jack McGregor, Reflection
Pam Miller, Starry Fox
Arlene Oraby, Puppy Pile
Christopher M. Register, Barred Owl
Leslie M. Rupracht, Teal Steel Wheel
T. Parker Sanborn, Oceans on Leaves
Eric Sbarge, Flexing Before the Heavenly King Vaisravana
Martin Settle, Chihuly Day
Brittany Taylor-Driggers, Anxiety
Susan G. Williams, A Cardinal Expression
Don Yager, Resilient Heights: Lone Sentinel at Mt. Mitchell
Lee Zacharias, Greensboro Reflections

POETRY SELECTED FOR PUBLICATION IN KAKALAK 2025
J.S. Absher, “Casual Epiphany”
Laura White Alderson, “Water Thief”
Jenny Badman, “Machu Picchu”
Pam Baggett, “Underfoot”
Bruce Bailey, “Sharecropper 1935”
Don Ball, “May Day”
Richard Band, “Food Lion Epiphany”
Joan Barasovska, “Sparking in the Parlor”
Sam Barbee, “Pressing Matters”
Jenny Bates, “Today’s Goals”
Jennifer B. Batson, “Pater Unfamilias”
Mary Lautzenhiser Bellon, “Fire in the Baptism River”
Margaret Bishop, “If We Never Loved”
Al Black, “Second Amendment”
Farnham D. Blair, “Muxhe: Graciela Iturbide, 1986”
Susan F. Blair, “Haunting You”
Ann Herlong Bodman, “Regret”
Becky Boling, “my fish poem”
Cheryl Boyer, “Stillness”
Les M. Brown, “I Bought a Lawn Edger”
Kathleen Calby, “Falling, One Amazing Grace”
Bill Caldwell, “Turn So You Won’t Burn”
Catherine Carter, “Vermin”
Emily Carter, “Moving Rain”
Kenneth Chamlee, “Hush Puppy”
S.L. Cockerille, “Passing By”
Patty Cole, “Our Wake”
Joy Colter, “Commercial Immigrants”
Debra Conner, “My Father’s Wallet”
Delia Corrigan, “On Getting My Classmate’s
               Photo Developed”
Caroline Cottom, “I Visit You, My Husband,
               After Coronary Bypass Surgery”
Anne Cowie, “On Washing Dishes While Visiting
               My Daughter in Her Berlin Apartment”
Cherie Cox, “Lost and Found”
Susan M. Craig, “Sundown at the Lake Cabin”
Jane Mary Curran, “Ghosts in the House”
Steve Cushman, “Dear Customer in Front of Me
               at the Harris Teeter Checkout”
Debra A. Daniel, “The Ways I Tell You”
Patricia Darcy, “The Other Side of Sorrow”
Narya Rose Deckard, “Sundays”
Mary Alice Dixon, “The Three Shouts of God”
Deborah H. Doolittle, “Sleeping with the Window Open
               in an Old House”
M. Scott Douglass, “Change of Scenery”
Tom Dow, “Locker Room Revelation”
Morrow Dowdle, “After All This Time, I Still
               Can’t Love My Body”
Sandra Brodkin Dreis, “Diaspora with Ganache”
Marla H. Dunham, “Gone”
Nadine Ellsworth-Moran, “Stargazing at Ghost Ranch
               in January”
Adriana Estill, “How Audacious, Fall Foliage”
Terri Kirby Erickson, “Full Moon”
Lynn Farmer, “A Quest for Holiness”
Nicole Farmer, “little bird”
Maeve Fox, “Molasses Melodies”
Regina YC Garcia, “Afrofutures Haiku Quintet in Multiverse:
               Godette School Road”
Michael Gaspeny, “Down the Hill from Golgotha”
Karen George, “What I Miss Most”
Jo Anne Moser Gibbons, “The Best Medicine”
Paige Gilchrist, “Delayed Gratification”
Louis Girón, “The Hawk”
Terri Greco, “Reading Carl Phillips While a Drunk Man
               Reclines in My Lap”
Anne Waters Green, “First Week in June”
Barbara P. Greenbaum, “Knots”
Aruna Gurumurthy, “Lantern”
Cordelia M. Hanemann, “Packing Separately”
Tim Harkins, “Duet in Fear Major”
Janis Harrington, “Gathering My Children at Dusk”
Judy Haughee-Bartlett, “Sylvia in the Cemetery”
Peggy Heitmann, “Granddaddy Cauley Rolled
               Country Gentlemen Cigarettes”
Mary Hennessy, “Raising Fire”
Robert W. Hill, “Tai Chi and Fat Pole-Vaulting”
Earl Carlton Huband, “Through A Grandfather’s Dead Reckoning”
Jenny Hubbard, “The Trees in Robert Frost’s Woods
               Write a Thank-you Note”
Ann Humphries, “Wildflower Trail”
Karen Luke Jackson, “Shield Maiden”
David O. Jenkins, “The Middle Moon”
Deborah Johnson-Bousquet, “Yaupon”
Shannon Purdy Jones, “Tradwives”
Patricia A. Joslin, “Following in His Footsteps”
Jeanne Julian, “The Final Frame”
Paul Karnowski, “On Crying Once, at the Grocery Store”
Caroline Kane Kenna, “What Would David Bowie Do?”
Anne Kissel, “New Math”
Chad Knuth, “Swimming Lessons”
Eugene Kusterer, “String Theory”
Anita Liebscher, “Road to Redemption”
Michael Loderstedt, “Directions for Building an Island Camp”
Kathryn Etters Lovatt, “Whitewashed”
Mark MacAllister, “Fall Back”
Gina Malone, “Milkweed”
Mary E. Martin, “Ginger’s Chickens”
Preston Martin, “I’m Saturated with Despair”
Nancy Martin-Young, “Ivory Soap”
Katherine H. Maynard, “Sitting Shiva”
Steve McCown, “Boy on a Swing”
Cada McCoy, “The Least One Could Do”
Lynda R. Myers, “We Stop for Heirlooms at Dean’s Farm Market”
Ruth Nicholson, “Someone Brought a Football”
Ione O’Hara, “A Song from the Belly of a Crocodile”
Lily Oetting, “September Vesper”
Arlene Oraby, “My Polish Grandmother, Babcia”
Scott Owens, “Waiting for a Text Announcing the Arrival
               of My First Grandchild”
Jeffrey Parker, “One Soldier; One Freedom”
Gail Peck, “Massacre at Quarantine”
Fred Pelka, “A Jewish Cemetery in Rural Germany”
Isis Phoenix, “My Grandmother’s Violets”
Diana Pinckney, “Divorce & Marriage”
Gary V. Powell, “Before the Buzzer”
Judith Cummings Reese, “Chiaroscuro: Play of Light & Shadow”
Hannah Ringler, “We Are Concerned About the Freshwater Mussels”
Peg Robarchek, “Funeral Bound”
Elizabeth Robin, “Birdwatching”
Betty Ritz Rogers, “Kate”
Maria Rouphail, “To the White Boy in the Third Grade
               Who Wrote Me a Love Note”
Michal Rubin, “My Daughter Bathes Me”
Eric Sbarge, “To Be Rather Than to Seem”
Roberta Schultz, “From My Own Hands It Is Sacred”
Jane Seitel, “Split Sextet with Sequoia”
Martin Settle, “Abscission”
Sharon Smith Shadrick, “Anna Faye’s Bouffant Beauty Salon”
Sherry Siddall, “Aurora”
Duncan Smith, “Guidance”
Michael L. Stein, “Manufacturing Memory”
Elizabeth C. Steiner, “Salt”
Allen Stevenson, “The Canebrake”
Caren Stuart, “Moving the Shape Shiftings On”
Erika Takacs, “Dog/God”
Lynne Santy Tanner, “Adirondack Morning”
Bruce Taylor, “What Nourishes Us”
Richard Allen Taylor, “Inserting Myself Into Someone Else’s Picture”
Melinda Thomsen, “Nadiya Becomes a Kestrel”
Betsy Thorne, “Mind”
Lucinda Trew, “photograph of Frida Kahlo as a child”
Lisa C. Underwood, “Of Little Faith”
Peter C. Venable, “What Men or Gods Are These?”
Mark Vogel, “Living in the Far Territories”
Carmen Dressler Ward, “What’s Not to Love”
Sharon Waters, “Existential Dread Early on a Thursday Morning”
Rebecca Suzan Watts, “The Fan”
Priscilla Webster-Williams, “Mary Magdalene”
Eric Weil, “Yelp Review”
Randy Lee White, “Sand Hills”
Kristie L. Williams, “There Was a Time When Coffee
               Tasted Better Than It Should”
Liza Wolff-Francis, “What Eve Taught Me”
Nancy H. Womack, “Twentieth Anniversary”