The winning poem for 2010 is . . . 

A Penny for Your Coy Fish
by Karlyn Louise Risher

My thoughts are coy fish

Swelling in the space I give them
Or their bones drying splinters in my brain
Some gasping at air they can't breathe
Others nibbling on fractions of sunlight
All wandering patternless
Through faulty synapses

I keep some on strings
Like balloon animals
Sometimes I think I should
Snip the threads and let them go
Through ears and eyebrows

Or let them wrap themselves up
Cocoons of cautionary fleshy fibers
In the folds of my brain
To transcend this mortal mind
And be taken up upon the winds of the universe

My thoughts are coy fish
That have sprouted wings.

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