I have no real text criticisms, although perhaps I lose a little momentum in the penultimate stanza. In concept, I suppose the fact that the girl's mother is mentioned only in the line I have quoted above raised a slightly disturbing question in my mind. The second place goes to Michael Pollick for his poem Makebelieve Ballroom . And, finally, Lee Rodgers, for Void . This poet also submitted several poems, and these are very ambitious.
Void presents the concept of nothingness.
Although the poet has a good shot at it, by presenting the words, mostly without building them into sentences. This is an interesting technique, and of course it makes any attempt to paraphrase what the poem is about next to impossible. It is, in many ways, the ultimate application of the principle of searching for the right word, and the words must work without even the modification implied by sentence structure. There are sentences and phrases within the poem, but the purpose of these is to present what is being done. So there it is.