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May 07, 2025
2025 Live Out Loud Poetry Contest Accepting Entries
Since 2021, the Live Out Loud poetry contest presented by Rainbow Alliance and NEPA Pride Project has sought to raise up LGBTQ+ voices within the Wyoming Valley.
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Local Competition Celebrates LGBTQ+ Voices

The Live Out Proud Poetry Contest, presented by Rainbow Alliance and NEPA Pride Project, was originally launched in the summer of 2021 with the goal of amplifying LGBTQ+ voices in the Wyoming Valley. The purpose of the contest was to bring creative expression to life within the Greater Wyoming Valley LGBTQ+ community. We asked for unpublished poems that move us, make us laugh/cry, teach us something new, or a combination. By promoting the creative medium of poetry, our vision was for those who submitted to express themselves and how it pertains to “Live Out Proud” in their own poetic words.

The 2025 Live Out Proud Poetry Contest is now accepting submissions. The topic for this year’s contest is “Live Out Proud.” Entries must be submitted no later than Friday, May 16, 2025 by 11:59 PM. Visit the Rainbow Alliance Poetry Contest Page for more details on submission guidelines, submission forms and prizes.

Check out the three winning poems from the 2024 contest and learn a little more about the winning poets below.

 

First Place: Jolene Maleski

Jolene Maleski lives in Wilkes-Barre with her wife and son. She graduated from King’s College with a degree in English Writing and currently works from home in the healthcare field. She continues to write and publish poetry and is working on a novel, probably for the rest of her life.

 

Body Double

Flesh is a funny thing.
Skin- the outfit I was never really comfortable in
Until I became hers.
Warm bodies woven together in lust and love,
eyes, lips and hands learning every inch
while we memorized the scars to match the stories.

I still absorb her confidence through kissing,
now that she nurses my wounds literally,
from that double mastectomy neither of us expected.
Overwhelmed in gauze and tape, drains and meds,
Never-ending appointments.
All while still trying to be mothers
to a beautiful boy who notices everything.

I stand before her,
this patient-wife I’ve become
fresh scars after the reconstruction,
more afraid of the mind and mirror,
She teaches me to be proud and transparent
Cursing the cancer and not myself.
So I turn to stare
and laugh this time instead of cry, thinking
Barbie didn’t have nipples either.

Second Place: Jenn Johnson-Hamer

Whether stories, poems, spirit, or music, Jenn Johnson-Hamer can almost always be found creating. She currently lives in a small town in the northeast with her partner, daughter, and snuggly cat. When not in her studio, local coffee shops are her favorite places to work and chat. To follow along on her journey, subscribe to her free Voices newsletter at jjhdoveandblackbird.substack.com or follow her @doveandblackbird on social media.

 

Live out proud, they say

But how can you
When even card-carrying members
Can still be made to feel
Like they don’t exist

Infighting.
Judgment.
Don’t you remember, comrades, what it feels like
Not to belong

How can you look into the eyes of your brother
Sister
Sib

Child

Scorn their very breath
And still call yourself an ally

What does it mean to live out proud
When a rainbow can still draw the barrel of a gun
When unity is as foreign a concept as peace
As inclusion

As community

Where is the pride
In simply opening your eyes today
In living a life you’ve worked for
Instead of the one dealt you
In choosing to love
Just love
All

Live out proud is arrogance
When my sister still cannot walk down the street
In her 6-inch heels,
Feather boa,
And beard
This rainbow
Biblically heralded as promise
Promise that it would never flood again
Now adopted, fostered, reclaimed
It remains
But by god or by community
Why then are my ankles still wet
My feet soaked through
Stuffed inside their waterproof shoes

Third Place: Daniel Gomes

Daniel Gomes is a nonbinary filmmaker and published writer raised and based in Mountain Top, PA. Daniel is a first generation American, born to British and Portuguese parents, and the first in their family to graduate college. Daniel attended Emerson College’s Film Production program, where they were engaged in Boston’s diverse queer community. An outspoken supporter of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC rights, Daniel combines political activism with satire and sarcasm in much of their work. They are passionate about creating social change and working towards human rights for all, with humor and weirdness along the way.

 

Werewolf

I don’t know when I was bit,
But the marks don’t lie
And now I’m stuck in the middle
Waiting for that full moon
That I can’t seem to wait for,
I wanna be transformed full time.
Those who have done it to success inspire me,
But it’s not just changing your name,
Or your clothes,
Or your face,
It’s taking away your father’s wish to have a son,
Or your mother’s to have grandchildren.
It’s making every family reunion unbearable because your new form terrifies them.
It’s thinking of how your dead grandparents would have revoked their love
If they knew what you had become.
And after what feels like lifetimes of hiding in the shadows,
Concealing your true, beastly form,
Soon you find those who wish to see it.
Every bit of it:
The hair, the teeth, the scowl,
The claws, the fangs, the eyes.
And they’re not afraid.
They smile and reach out for you, so that you may join them.
Join them as you are
As you always were
As you now always will be.
You are no longer a wolf in sheep’s clothing,
You are a wolf in wolf’s clothing.