Poems for the 2026 Kansas State Fair

Butter Haikus

By Elliot McCowen

Sweet, fatty butter

gift from the divine bovine

you make my corn taste

like summer days

spent outside playing, grilling,

and splashing all day

What Kansas Means to Me

By Melissa Savage

What is Kansas?

Is it a plain farmland

Or a desolate landscape?

No, it is a Place filled with love.

Kansas has a feeling of peace —

Belonging and hope.

The prairie is my sanctuary

Walking through the tall grass gives me

A quiet corner of the Earth to call mine

Biking down the streets fills me with joy

And the knowledge that I am home

Looking On

By Ezra Northerns

Looking on

over the field

beyond the trees

up the sky that

crashes down

to spark the horizon

blazing the fire

in your eyes

as the sun sets.

Comunidades

By Sylvia Matlock Defries

The flint hills that roll for miles

The chill that comes with the night

The endless fields that come alive

With the restless crickets that hide away from sight

The frills of stars speckled in the sky

Where the nighttime birds fly

The scent of rain long awaited

The ground so dry

The grass yearning for forgiveness from the sky

The sunflowers always pointing at the sun hot and dry

The hope for a tomorrow better than today

The feeling of the warm breeze in my hair

The deer that prance through the soft blue grass

The chills that run through my spine when I hear

the name of my beloved home, Kansas

Kansas Is….

By Zaven Tannahill

ribs and brisket on my plate

sunflowers in the countryside

and on my kitchen table

Chiefs, Jayhawks, Wildcats, and me

sunsets with beautiful colors,

yellow, pink, and orange.

Kansas is where I grow.

Kansas is my home.

There Are No Sunflowers

By Isobel Marzluf

I have never seen a

Sunflower in Kansas just weeds

Like golden dandelions|

Roadkill is fresh on

The ground and weeds grow everywhere.

There are no sunflowers

But before the cars

There was no roadkill only life

And maybe sunflowers

Kansas Sunflower

by Giovanni Santana

A sunflower stands proud and tall,

Watching summer greet us all.

Facing sunshine every day,

Growing stronger all the way.

Bright as hope and gold as wheat,

Standing where the sky and prairie meet.

When I think of home, it’s easy to see

Kansas blooms inside of me.

Where Spaces Stretch Wide

By Edith Hillegeist

A home where spaces stretch wide and

Birds glide in the sky.

Scent of rain answers the ground, dry.

Thunder rolls and heavy rain dashes.

The bright blue sky returns to calm the land.

Ancient hills of green stretch for miles.

Sunflowers, bright and yellow, come to end the summertime.

The night sky lit with milky stars and bright moonlight.

A home where spaces stretch wide.

Summer in Kansas

By Kia’i Meyer-Yu

Cascades of glimmering warmth shine down on me

Trees sway lazily in breeze

The deep blue sky stretching on and on

The vast clouds, like floating islands

All like reminders of a dream that ended too soon

And even though I’ve woken up

And this isn’t it dream

I can’t help but feel a sense of wonder

Gazing at the thing I thought I’d never see

Sunflower

By Pa’a Meyer-Yu

Sunflowers are everywhere

Sunflower seeds, sunflower patches,

Sunflower oil, sunflower butter

Sunflowers are Kansas

Yellow petals, slender stem, brown center

Always follows the sun

Always with Kansas

Sunflowers are Kansas

Sunflower

By Isla Parker

The sunflower finds the light

Captures every ray

It’s golden yellow petals gleam

Wakes in the East to grow strong and tall

Turning through the day

Majestic rapid growth

Silent sentry observing the sun rise and fall

Absorbing the nutrients of the shimmering sun

Giant brown face makes the yellow shine

Bees hum amongst

Sea of golden soldiers marches

Across the open field

Harvest of seeds to nourish the birds

Creeping out dry, raw dirt

Roots spread deep and strong

The Seasons Change

By Maria Orozco

I’d like to think of seasons changing like the ticks of a clock. Every single tick is a new day. Tick tick tick, the seasons change with every hour that passes by. The spring leaves subside to a red hue that the autumn carries all season. The air carries the smell of fresh pumpkins and crops. Tick tick tick, you blink and it’s winter, the season known for being the saddest of them all simply because it carries a colder darker approach than every other. The sun begins to cast her dark shadow for the entire season. Nobody likes the winter, only the idea of it, the type in story books where you sit inside with a warm soup and hot chocolate. Winter is seen as a burden nobody stops to admire the pretty snow or the beauty that the winter carries. Tick tick tick, the springtime has come, the season of rebirth and growth. The second best season most enjoy, the early leaves that were once forgotten grow and subside to a beautiful green once again, the sun returns with her beautiful yellow hue. Tick Tick Tick, the summer is here. Summer is often the favorite season of most, it’s associated with freedom, the end of the school year, vacation. The world keeps spinning, the seasons keep changing, every day is a new Tick.

Making Quilts with Grandma

By Caroline Wertzberger

All quilts are made with care.

Some are soft and some are rough.

Grandma has me pick colors.

Purple for her, pink for me.

She helps me sew and fix mistakes.

The blocks go together like puzzle pieces.

We build each quilt with love.

Washing Goats in July

By Anna Cassell

Strawberry was sweet, and Tilly was wild.

They were both patterned like vanilla and chocolate swirl ice cream.

Strawberry was calm and quite and Tilly was crazy,

and bleated loudly.

But both were fluffy and adorable. They used to smell like hay,

but now they smell like mint.

We dried them with the blow dryer in the sun.

We were going to wash Kiwi, but we didn’t have the time.

Flying Through the Fair

By Calvin He

Sleek wings touched with black and white

as the sun sets and the day comes to a close

soar over a red-roofed building into a world

of color and a rainbow of shining lights

the scents of turkey legs and pronto pups

and sweet apple pie and funnel cake drift

through the carnival games and the grand attraction

the Ferris wheel where small hanging orbs

hold something deeper within but everything

combines into a singular glowing form

while day gives in to night

the pink and orange sky

fading into purple

a tiny moth flies away

having seen it all

Cotton Candy

By Viola He

pillows of soft spun

delicate goodness for me

pastel pink and blue

key ingredient:

sugar! sugar! more sugar!

all in my tummy

April Burnings

By Cheryl Seeley Savage

I hear echoes inside bursting seeds.

The air stills and the grass pauses. Match-strike and

Smoke bakes, boils these bulbs. The explosion of red-line exposes

Fevered moments inside my rustling brow.

See here: this melting and molting of pressing protection

Pushes through crisp soil, solidly drenching a warmth that will

Freeze impatient wind.

I fall above this scent. I flourish beneath these coals. I spill forth into

A promise of another planted tomorrow.

Van Gogh Colors in Kansas

By Janice Northerns

Thick slabs of gold hold up the cobalt sky

in a vacant landscape. It’s the loneliness

of the prairie, the solitude of flyover country.

You, urban girl, sneer you’d never live here:

Kansas is no place like home to you.

Yet somehow each visit finds you drawn

to another quirky store or a house

you long to own. This place, patient

with secrets, waits for your gaze to linger

long enough to find the sunflowers, acres

of welcome ready to catch you as the blue-black

night, steeped deep in stars, calls you

to a memory you didn’t know you missed.

Dittany

By Hyejung Kook

Choosing perennials for our native plant garden,

I’ve grown smitten with dittany, also called wild

oregano, frost mint, fairy skirts. So far I’ve only

touched a seedling’s fragrant and edible leaves,

never seen the tiny purple flowers that bloom

July to November, essential nectar for monarchs

migrating in the fall. Yet already I’m impatient

for the morning after the first hard freeze, to see

sap drawn up from the roots expand, split stems,

squeeze through the cracks and freeze into rippling

paper-thin ribbons of ice, frost flowers that

will melt or sublimate at the touch of sunlight. 

Distant Storm

By Jordan Northerns

Distant Storm

Away to the north

She is slowly dragging her

Gray gown eastward

Soft curtain of rain

Bent and frozen in time