Attenuated

light shines from white-gray sky on

gray-white snow, and bare

brown branches below. Winter’s 

palette, muted, still does glow.   

Renée Szostek has poems published in various journals and has won several literary awards. She has won first, second, and third place in the haiku category of the Seven Hills Review Literary Contest & Penumbra Poetry/Haiku Contest, the second and third place in the adult division of the Southern Shakespeare Sonnet Contest, the second prize and third prize (twice) for poetry in the Westminster Art Festival, and third place for poetry in the adult senior division of the Vicksburg (Michigan) Tournament of Writers. The University of Michigan Arts at Michigan Arts Info newsletter selected her haiku poems as Haiku of the Week four times. Her poems have been published in Panoply, The Ekphrastic Review, The Ekphrastic Review Writing Challenges, Lucky 7: The Ekphrastic Marathon Anthology, The Pi Mu Epsilon Journal, Peninsula Poets, Integra, Resist Psychic Death, dotdotdash, and several anthologies of poetry published by the Moonstone Arts Center.