💥 Ink, Fire & Rebellion Presents:

🎇 Bombs Bursting in Air – The Winners

Sky-splitting color.
Memory on fire.
Poems that didn’t just sparkle—they detonated.

We asked for brilliance. For rupture. For pain reimagined as light.
And you gave us fireworks that didn’t flinch.
Now the smoke has cleared.
And what remains is truth, raw and crackling.

Note

To ensure a fair judgment, poems were extracted and read blind—without names or intros. Here are the winners. (We will be in touch with you for prizes, bios, and interview + [Venmo, Stripe, etc] for first place).

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Ink, Fire & Rebellion: Bombs Bursting in Air Poetry Challenge
Sky-splitting color. Memory on fire. Truth left smoldering.

1. 🧨 Fan Favorite
   “Bombs Bursting in the Air”
   A war child’s memory re-lit. Selected by readers.

2. 🥉 Third Place
   “What Remains After Fire”
   Two lovers kiss inside a crumbling world. Sensual, cinematic, and devastating.

3. 🥈 Second Place
   “i heard it before it landed”
   A boxing ring haunted by war. Quiet rage and emotional rupture.

4. 🥇 First Place
   “Little Boys Boom”
   A cherry bomb and an atom bomb fuse into one bitter fruit. Surreal and searing.

5. 💣 Special Thanks
   To everyone who submitted and voted. Stay tuned for next prompt and guidelines.

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🧨 Fan Favorite, 4th place in our hearts:

From the POV of a war child—unfiltered and unforgettable.
🔥A war child’s memory re-lit. You felt it. You voted. We listened.

“Bombs Bursting in the Air” by

Sanya

On a summer night, I laid down
in the tender lap of my mom.
She caressed my head
with her gentle embrace.
I felt the peace—
like heaven’s grace.

She sang me a lullaby of her home,
the long-lost land, ruined by bombs.
She had tasted and lived despair—
ache of loss, sting of fear.
The bombs bursting in the air
made her weak, frail, and bare.

Her voice, so sweet, dissolved around.
Her words poured like an angel’s song.
I looked in her eyes—beautiful and bold.
Years of struggle, quietly told.

She spoke of two young lovers,
mutilated on their wedding day,
their joy reduced to rubble and clay.

She spoke of her aunt,
her nephew Farhan,
who lost her child still held in arms.

My mother spoke—
I kept listening—
until a siren pierced the evening.

As the sound grew loud, she panicked too.
She pushed me away, ran to the room,
carried the infant—my brother—in gloom.

I ran outside to check the sound,
sprinted to the meadows where people screamed.
“A missile is coming!” they cried, panicked.
I asked, “Where?” They pointed south.
I looked back—my heart pounding out.

The missile was swimming toward my home.
I ran to ami, to take her out—
but the missile was faster.
It struck my house.

I stumbled back in the wave of the blast.
My world was torn.
It fell apart...

I searched for ami,
through smoke and stone—
but all I found
was ash
and bone.

(Note: “ami” means mother.)

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🥉 Third Place:

Two lovers kiss inside a crumbling world.
Sensual, cinematic, and devastating.
Not survival—defiance.
🔥 Free entry + canonized honorable mention

“What Remains After Fire” by

K. Asteria

The air was velvet-black,
smothered in ash.
Even the stars closed their eyes.

You found me in the ruins—
a body still warm,
but nothing left to save.

Your voice was flint
striking the raw nerve of me.
Every word—
another small explosion.

We didn’t speak of hope.
We knew better.

You traced my scars
like cartographers of a broken continent,
lips soft, hands cruel,
as if beauty could survive this.

“Let it burn,” you said.
“There’s nothing left but us.”

So we kissed—
not tender,
but hungry,
as if the world owed us its last breath.

Every sound outside was ending—
the shatter of glass dreams,
the groan of foundations giving way.
The streets moaned red,
and still, you pressed deeper.

This was not survival.
It was defiance.

You ravaged me
like we were the last two names
on the tongue of time.
Like pain was holy.
Like ruin was ours to command.

When the ceiling cracked
and the heavens gave in,
we didn’t run.

We held each other
as the bombs burst in air,
and knew
that love—
if it ever lived—
looked like this:
two shadows entwined
in the wreckage.

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🥈 Second Place:

Trauma reverberates in every punch thrown and every friend lost.
Set in a boxing ring but haunted by war, this poem bleeds with quiet rage and love.
A masterpiece of rhythm, restraint, and emotional rupture.
🔥 Free entry to the next competition + full feature

“i heard it before it landed” by

Vita Sporca

i’ve seen men blow up without a sound
jaw twitching, eyes wet, fists still high
like they ain’t heard the bell
like something inside refused to stay down
like war followed them home in their bones

the gym don’t smell like sweat no more
it smells like cordite and confession
like someone prayed too late on the mats
like promises made to ghosts who can’t answer back

i sparred a man with a hole in his side
gunshot scar, stitched crooked
he said, “i’m tired of talkin’ shit with no hands to back it”

so we boxed
not for points
but for something we couldn’t name
something that lived between impact and echo

bombs burst different when they’re inside you
when you’re swinging with ghosts in your gloves
when the only voice in your head sounds like someone you lost
when every combination is a conversation with the dead

one time
i heard a kid cry after a knockout
not from pain
from remembering who he hit
from seeing his father’s fists in his own hands

and i get it
i do
i lost someone once
not to a bullet
but to life being cruel at the wrong time

he died in silence, like a punch that lands too clean

every july 4th
i hear fireworks
and flinch
not ‘cause of fear
but because he would’ve loved this part—
the way they light up the dark

and it hurts
that he’ll never
hear
the bang

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🥇 First Place:

A cherry bomb and an atom bomb fuse into one bitter fruit.
Surreal, political, and searing—this poem doesn’t blink.
It tastes like memory and guilt, served on a star-spangled plate.
🔥 $50 prize, solo feature + interview incoming

“Little Boys Boom” by

Elzada James

Red and round as can be, a cherry bomb,
the world on fire with a little green cap
curling right out from whence it came.

If the vine is life, and life is fleeting like a bird,
then it was delivered by one named Enola Gay—
flushed out from the grand ol’ U.S. of A.

You detonate it with the sharp edge of your teeth.
It pops, spurting soft guts everywhere all at once.
Your tongue stirs in the night, alive again, tasting
seeds ripe with forgotten promises,
fireworks fruiting mayhem in your mouth,
bursting like an atomic habit, blinding—
like it’ll get you closer to what you want.
Like it will satisfy you this time.

In the weight of July, in heat serpentine,
every color in the sky—fantastico, green grape,
cosmic purple rain and sweet clementine.

Some mothers can say it’s just people having fun,
when they play with power;
some hold the severed hand
plucked from their only son.

They mark the minute, the hour, the day
darkened by the shadow
of Enola Gay.

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💣 Special Thanks

To everyone who submitted, shared, voted, wept, burned.
Your words matter.
This was more than a prompt.
It was a reckoning.

🖋️ Write loud.
❤️‍🔥 Write light.
💥 Let it burn.

Thank you for participating. Stay tuned for the next competition. Prompt will be announced on July 14th.

— Luciana Fisher, Cassian Delmare, and the House of Ink, Fire & Rebellion