Home > About > Library News
2024 Sidewalk Poetry Winners
The City of Appleton launched the Sidewalk Poetry Program in 2014. New poems are stamped each spring as a part of the Department of Public Work’s sidewalk replacement program. Visit the City of Appleton’s website for a complete map of all current poem locations.
Congratulations to the authors of the poems selected for the 2024 City of Appleton Sidewalk Poetry Contest! Keep reading to view this year’s selected poems.
Goodbye childhood innocence by Leah Dreyer
Washed away like
sidewalk chalk streets
into the sewer drain:
a kaleidoscope of colors,
of memories
as we raced our bikes
down driveways
and skinned our knees on dreams.
May we meet again when I am older.
equipoise by Rochelle Isaacson
your memories
and my memories
overlap
so symmetrically
that as I tell the story
we can walk back there
together
on the same path
Emotion Sickness by Brianne Getchius
Our love makes people sick.
Because it is syrupy sweet,
stomach ache from too much candy,
exit the tunnel of love blindingly,
spun on a carnival ride dizzyingly,
threw up disgustingly,
adorable.
Not because we’re queer.
Popsicle Summer by Rebecca Zornow
I never learned to name
the bird call
that sounds of blue popsicles,
of a day longer than a year.
I never learned
but the bird calls all the same.
Untitled by Jessica Lewis
robin wakes me in my bed
flitting flash of cardinal red
wide wing hawk
conversive crow
mourning dove bobs down below
woodpecker drills grub from tree
quaking yew with chickadee
owl hoots trills a tune
my neighBIRDhood
it slumbers soon