1st Place Winner of the Spring Poetry Contest: No Place Like Home - Keath Silva

I am afraid to eat the lemons from 

the singed trees. I am burnt like crosswalks. Tires

drag ghosts. Neighbors gone. We see all the way 

to the ocean now. The buried embers 

of NewYear's day. Swings melt. Frogs move into 

neon green abandoned pool water, song 

haunting the night. No school today. Loss strips 

away at fingers, your bones. The white owl 

has not been seen or heard. We move into 

the ashes. Skeleton cars. Rain becomes

poison tires drag ghosts choked of breath sliding

photo albums, toasters, ottoman, shoes

Sooty sky, scorched lawns, twisted lamp post dim 

chimney sentinels in the orange air.

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Keath Silva is a trans poet and healing arts practitioner living in Los Angeles. Their work has been featured in songs by Figgy and Alana Balagot alongside the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles. Award-winning UK musician Amity Miller adapted Silva’s poems into lyrics in their song Plasticine. Their poems were the centerpiece for a tribute to the trans community by the fifty-piece orchestra, The Gay Freedom Band of Los Angeles. Along with their work being featured in the trans youth advocacy educator’s handbook, “The Advocate Educator,” Keath’s poems have been used in high school and college Transgender Studies curriculum. In their spare time, Keath enjoys hiking, gardening, singing, dancing and spendig time with their cat and their friends and family.