2013 WHITE BUFFALO LITERARY CHALLENGE

The theme of this year’s White Buffalo Literary Challenge is “Legends.” You are invited to participate whether you have Native American blood or just a sense of kinship with Native American people and culture. This is an annual challenge in which no entry fees are charged and only one piece of prose and one poem may be submitted. Those selected for publication will appear this fall in the annual anthology GIFTS OF THE GREAT SPIRIT containing winners of the 2013 White Buffalo Native American Poetry Contest. Concentrate on the cover art below, or use your own imagination, to start. See Rules beside the poem which serves as an example.

WORDS FROM THE GRAND FATHER

Soh wohm dee chee lah
This is gift of the Ancestors
It is Language
It is the Word of Great Spirit
spoken through the words of the mind
through the mouth
Language is a gift
Treasure it and it will live
and through it the
Voices of the Ancestors shall speak
even as the sun spells hoops
against the Great Darkness
that puts all to sleep
Soh wohm dee cheelah
moku dim

Wanda Sue Parrott
( as Prairie Flower)

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

Postmark Deadline 5/31/13 Each entrant may submit one poem and one story. If e-mailing, send one copy on which your name and contact info appear in the top right margin. In the subject line state “Challenge” and your last name. If submitting by U. S. mail, send two copies, one with your name and contact info and one blank. Include name, address, e-mail and phone. Publisher Barbara Quin, Great Spirit Publishing, will select entries to appear in the anthology. Results will appear in the June issue of The Diploemat. Submit by e-mail to bquin@ymail.com. Send snail mail to: Challenge, Wanda Sue Parrott Literary Fund, Box 1821, Monterey, CA 93942. Keep copies as none will be returned

PSARTO—continued from Page 4

leaving the rest of us in the cold -- a situation still existing these day in so much of the poetry coming out of academia.

Every poet loves his own poetry, his poems are his children, so I'll use my own poem ‘Sugar Donuts’ as an example of what I am trying to say, and I desperately hope I am not being presumptuous.

My poem is about a little boy who cannot resist the sugar donuts his mother sends him to buy.

There is a particular boy in the story, of course, it couldn't be otherwise, for as I say above, it's the nature of art to start with the particular and then move to the universal, even if such movement is left unstated.

I hope ‘Sugar Donuts’ shows a few differences between genders, and that little boys and little girls are not the same. That is the universality I seek for my poem, albeit for my reader to figure it out for himself.”

(Joe Psarto welcomes comments at jpsarto@juno.com)

SUGAR DONUTS

I loved sugar donuts
from the Fleetwood Street Amish Market.
They were sweeter than sweet and never talked back
nor demanded attention
-- like so many sweet ladies would do laterr --
except for their begging to be pushed between my teeth
and minced to death. They were made for that!
On Saturday mornings Mom sent me
to buy twelve, and to bring twelve home,
but I never made it with more than ten,
and then,
my sisters said I was a crook,
a pilferer of donuts,
but what do girls know, anyway,
about donuts or life for that matter?
The truth is -- those darn Amish farmers,
they cheated me again, honest, Mom,
they cheated me again,
and I thought they were religious!
Father McNally says they're superstitious
and put devil signs on their barns.
But they sure can make sugar donuts!

Joseph A. Psarto
Westlake, Ohio

For a printable copy of this page click on Page 5 pdf or CONTINUE TO PAGE 6