Honorable Mention – Flash 405, June 2026: “Loop”
Poetry
What will we say when
the whole planet is on fire?
that we who live
in a burning house were
Judge’s Comments: This poem struck me in the heart! I am in awe of poets always, and this managed to fit precise imagery and social commentary and personal choice into five tiny lines. This poem will continue to haunt me.
Elizabeth J. Coleman’s Mega-Galaxies won the 2025 Adrift Chapbook Prize, judged by Matthew Olzmann. She is editor of Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), an international eco poetry anthology with a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and she is the author of several poetry collections. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Vermont College of Fine Arts, she performs the guitar weekly at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City where she lives with her husband. She is the grandmother of four.
Photo by Tom Gainor