FPS: Lantern Light Challenge Winners

For this challenge, we asked you to write around one lantern and let it guide the work. The submissions were thoughtful, inventive, and full of feeling. Each poem found a different way to hold light, to keep it steady, or to let it fade just enough to make room for wonder.

🏆 Winners

The Lantern by the Door by Tim Carmichael

Tim Carmichael's piece settles you right into that lived-in kitchen, with yellowed glass, boot-scuffed floors, and quiet ritual. There’s something steady and tender in how he traces what remains after the work and the years have passed. The light feels earned, a small steady promise that still holds its place in the dark.

Augury by Corvus

Corvus pulls you straight into the storm, where longing and desperation crash together until everything blurs. The lantern feels like both rescue and ghost light, trembling at the edge of the chaos.

Junkyard by Paris Rosemont

Paris Rosemont writes with a kind of raw honesty that lands hard and stays. The images are physical and unflinching, grief and creation welded into the same space.

Pen Names by Mackenzie Davis

Mackenzie Davis captures that moment where light almost gives itself away. The images move between grace and unease, layered with quiet longing. The result is haunting in a way that doesn’t ask for attention but earns it.

Forging Hope by Amanda Starks

Amanda Starks builds a steady sense of renewal, each line turning darkness into something almost tender. The piece leaves a quiet warmth where the ache used to be.

🎖️ Runners-up

• n o c t i s by Kristen Balyeat
• What if by Sonia Heidi Unruh
• Mary’s Non-optional Lovelight Continuum by The Dani Writer
• Lamplighter of Lost Dreams by Maggie Mahogany
• Beware by Christa Leigh
• By Design by Caladrius
• LLLLight by Lindsay Shiner Packard
• luminous by Hannah Moore
• The Mercenary Lantern by John R. Godwin
• Rebirthing by Marilyn Glover
• when all the stars are gone by angela hepworth
• I Haunt Your House by Tyler C Clark (he/they)
• When My World Was Dark by Daniel K
• My Flame by Cristal S.
• A Bolivian Lantern Dreams by Michele Nampalli

🏅 Honorable Mentions

• The Streetlamp in Paris, Near Passage Dauphine by Teresa Renton
• The Way by Shannon Dalley
• An Elegy, in Loving Memory of Camp Lanterns by Sam Spinelli
• Against A Navy Sky by Gabriel Huizenga
• small fire by Emily Ryan
• Ode to the Canari by River and Celia in Underland
• Soft-Shelled Egg by Kara Lu
• Orange Tango by Oscar Richard
• Moth Boy by J. R. Lowe
• Last light by Wren H

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