2025
POETRY OPEN
Honorable Mention
$25 Award
THE WIND IS A
WOLF TONIGHT
by Joe Kelly
The wind is a wolf tonight
Outside my bedroom window
Rough breath against the pane
Whispering
Hissing
Now screaming
His damning song
Rises to a shriek
Then seemingly silent laughter
Out beyond the trees
Now pawing at the wall
Now kicking ice and snow against the glass
Mocking me
Relentlessly
His voice rising and falling
Again and again
Taunting
There!
Listen!
Fool . . . fool . . . foooool!!
Taunting
Taunting
Telling me
What I am
What I was
to have let you go
______________________________
Joe Kelly is a lifelong resident of New Jersey. He enjoys attending poetry open mics, workshops and readings each month. His father loved poetry and would often recite lengthy poems from memory to his seven children. After a traumatic experience years ago, Joe’s counselor suggested that he journal each day “to clear his mind and the day.” Soon his journal entries became poems infused with humor, romance, metaphysics, and recovery. This is his first published work.