Winners of Friends of Falun Gong 2026 Poetry Competition Announced

FIRST PLACE

Her Matted Hair

Based on “Daughter Dies Three Days After Admission
to Prison for Practicing Falun Gong”

by Maura H. Harrison

For sixteen months, Ms. Chen remained detained.

It was a crippling time, her body strained
By torture and neglect. It left her weak
And worsening. It left her slow to speak.
It left her muddled, her four hundred and
Seventy-nine dark days jumbled by hand,
Plundered by hands. The inmates beat her at
The guards’ commands—cruel craven bureaucrats—
And finally, it left her wheel-chair bound.
She said, “I have to crawl to move around.”

Before a judge, some guards, her parents too,
Some days before she died, her voice came through:
She shouted one last time, “Falun Dafa is good.
Forbearance, truthfulness, compassion is good.”

I don’t know how Ms. Chen was treated later.
Did brutal fury pulverize with greater
Zeal? Did a single witness say a prayer
Or try to touch her tangled, matted hair?

What does compassion look like when your eyes
Are swollen shut? Can truth be heard in cries
Reduced to whispered gasps and groans? And how
Does patient waiting dab the battered brow?

Perhaps, when all is blurred, perspective grants
A consolation, faces orbed by glance,
The shining presence of a precious soul,
A truth that swells the heart, that makes one whole.

Transferred to prison on November fifth,
Ms. Chen began her sentence—five years with
A fine. But on November eighth, Ms. Chen
Was transferred to the hospital, and when
Her parents reached her, she was dead.
“No sign of life upon arrival” said
A doctor, privately. They cried and held
Her crumbled hands. They cried as heartache swelled.

Truth, for Ms. Chen, flowed from her open lips—
Viscous and black—true signs of courage, drips
Of dare,
Of dare,  drips mixing with her matted hair.

SECOND PLACE

Imagine

by Jan Mennite

Imagine losing basic human rights,
Of life and freedom, of religion too,
If there were no one to stand up and fight,
While those in power harmed and murdered you.
In striking Falun Gong, for hate and greed,
Their rulers found a devil’s road to wealth;
No mercy as their dying victims bleed,
To satisfy consumers’ quest for health.
Let voices rise with those who hear their cries,
From acts of heartless inhumanity,
Whose desperation echoes to the skies,
For rescue from such cold insanity.
If this were you, your cry might be, “How long?”
And know that it must stop for Falun Gong.

THIRD PLACE

My Prayer for Falun Gong

by Mark Stellinga

While sipping on a cup of tea I spotted lying near me,
a magazine left open to a page that caught my eye.
Tempted by its headline to discern the piece’s story,
well before I’d finished reading, I began to cry.

The comprehensive article, complete with shocking photos,
stunned my heart with images that truly broke my heart.
Its hard-to-fathom-testament to something so horrific
that every decent person that would read it, from the start

Would struggle with accepting that it’s happening—in this era!
A “Practice” which but only Godless demons could conceive.
I’ve changed my set of prayers to ask that all, despite their faith,
retain the right to exercise what Doctrine they believe.

They’re also stealing “body-parts” by killing healthy people—
their sick, barbaric tactic: steal a “new” to save an “old”
When failing parts in “favored comrades” need to be replaced—
making them, to the CCP, worth their weight in gold.

I’ve asked the One I’m working with to rearrange His calendar
to focus every chance He gets on saving Falun Gong.
It can’t be done without His help and, if my prayer is answered,
they’ll dearly pay for doing what the whole world knows is wrong.

FOURTH PLACE

The Cost of Our Silence

by Christian Emecheta

Before the boots came, they stood in parks at dawn,
arms raised like branches on a quiet lawn,
a million plus bodies learning to be still,
learning truth, compassion, patience — but the state’s dark will
feared everything, feared those who meant no ill.

July came. The orders struck like sharpened swords.
They came for the woman training in the square,
the professor lost among his quiet words,
the gentle priest who taught his neighbors there.
They came with vans, trucks, and minds like stone,
a dreadful execution of power on its throne,
threatened by the peaceful standing on their own.

What followed has no gentle name.
Cells designed to break the body’s frame.
Shocks applied until the screaming stopped
or twisted till resistance finally dropped.
Sign this paper. Renounce what makes you evil.
And those who would not sign faced dark upheaval —
kidneys, corneas, hearts cut from the living,
taken without mercy or forgiving,
sold to buyers who were told not to ask
where the organs came from, behind the mask,
whose chest was cut upon an office table
in a room the world dismisses as a fable.

This is not history. It still happens now.
The camps still run. The prisons are still filled.
And we who live untouched must ask ourselves how
we speak of freedom while our conscience is stilled.
What does our freedom mean if we stay mute?
A right ungiven bears a bitter fruit —
a fire that in time will burn us all.

Speak, then. Not because the world will listen, but because our silence is creating more walls when our voices can be creating cracks. Say their names. Say Falun Gong. Say what is wrong. Say it in your parliaments and radio stations, say it in your living rooms and prayer houses. The smallest voice can also leave marks. The gentlest truth will outlast the loudest lie.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Read the honorable mentions of
the Friends of Falun Gong website here.

“The Reaping” by M.D. Skeen

“Falun Gong” by Tod Benjamin

“Who, If I Cry Out, Would Hear Me” (after Rainer Maria Rilke) by Scharlie Meeuws

“The Tyrant Walks” by Leslie Hidley