The article presents the comments of Daniel Tysdal, one of the judges at the 2023 Short Grain Contest, on the poems that were chosen as winners. He states that the poem "The Distance" renders a very contemporary example of a relationship on the cusp through a marvellous array of honesty, music, and original imagery. He notes that the poem "It Is Not a Line" powerfully exposes the complex brutality and vitality of a geo-political line in taught articulations and remarkable turns.