I am so pleased to announce that the winner of Lit Shark Magazine’s December-January Poem of the Month contest is none other than Sandra Noel. Accepting her poem and later choosing it as the winner felt like a full-circle moment when I discovered she was the one who wrote it (I read all of our submissions on an anonymous basis), because Sandra also submitted the very first marine/nautical-themed poem that I read and accepted for Lit Shark’s SHARK WEEK Edition issue, called “I Am the Wanting Blue,” which felt like a little confirmation for me that the issue’s theme was a good idea!

Sandra’s contest-winning poem, “Bioluminescence Flashes in the Pull,” is similarly ocean-themed, and they both loosely are written from the perspective of the beach, toes practically plunging into the waves already. But where “I Am the Wanting Blue” emphasizes nature, people-watching, and how we can be reminded of love through common things and occurrences, “Bioluminescence Flashes in the Pull” focuses on something beautifully rare, something that many of us will never witness in person: the marine world aglow at nighttime with natural glow-in-the-dark matter, bioluminescent algae. The poem is this beautiful observation of the phenomenon, but it also comments on diving into the unknown, the perplexity of a dark, even opaque, ocean surface, and the wonder and pride found in diving in anyway. It’s a beautiful, brief poem that packs a lot into a short read, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

For each contest, the winner will receive a unique digital broadside of their winning poem, and the one I created can be found below. I put a lot of thought and love into every broadside that I create, no matter how simple or complex they turn out to be, but it felt particularly important to create something that was as striking as a bioluminescent experience proves to be. I hope you enjoy it and can feel Sandra’s poem through it the way I do.