OnMilwaukee.com is pleased to announce the winners of the Second Annual Milwaukee Poetry Contest, the only Milwaukee poetry contest in the world.

Charles P. Ries won first place for his poem "Milwaukee's First Dance" and Tom Mollica nabbed second with "Hot Dog Wrapper."

Both of the men are, coincidentally, 51 years old, single and lived in L.A. for a period of time, but they couldn't be more different in style and personality.

Ries has been writing for more than five years and published work in 50 small press anthologies. He has written 150 poems and also published a book called "Monje Malo Speaks English."

Mollica, on the other hand, had never written a poem before "Hot Dog Wrapper."

Ries, a fundraiser for Marquette University who has attended numerous workshops at Woodland Pattern Book Center, explains why he wrote "Milwaukee's First Dance."

"A bunch of friends and I went to the former Sue's Band Wagon in Bay View looking for great place to polka. Sue's was a classic Milwaukee polka spot. All the old timers were there, the disco ball was turning and the Brandy Old Fashions and beer were flowing. I danced with a few of the old gals and thought I was in heaven. There was such magic there, in that moment, and such beauty watching those polka afficianados do their thing."

And Mollica's poetic inspiration? "I live near Miller Park and went for a walk and I saw a hot dog wrapper and thought up the idea," he says.

Despite completely different approaches, both men definitely tapped into the true spirit of poetry.

Special thanks to this year's judges: John McGivern, Robyn Cherry, Eva Alice Counsell and Jeff Sherman and Molly Snyder Edler of the OnMilwaukee.com staff.

Milwaukee's First Dance
By Charles P. Ries

Ladies with big south side hair
Spin like tops in polyester pairs.
Fans overhead slowly turn the hot summer air.
Conversations light as baseball, recipes and Tupperware.
Widowed mothers dance with daughters, turning gently round,
The corner bar dance floor with the south side sound.
5 p.m. Saturday mass has long since past
As the congregation says "amen," and the pitcher is passed.
Accordion maestro with the greased back hair
Sends sweethearts and old hipsters moving - as if floating on air.
Eighty-year-old charmer in a bowling shirt
Spins his girl friend wearing a poodle skirt.
Who surrender Medicare worries beneath a disco ball.
Milwaukee's first dance lives again at Sue's Dance Hall.

Hot Dog Wrapper
By Tom Mollica

A hot dog wrapper did a waltz over the blacktop,
the gentle breeze letting the paper kiss the ground,
then quietly having it float in the air,
as it dipped, pirouetted and skipped,
again, again and again in a slow motion minuet,
past the garbage baskets filled with emptied beer bottles, discarded bratwurst wrappings
and other tailgating trash,
past the man strolling with black garbage bags gathering aluminum cans,
past the still smoldering drum with burnt-out charcoal sending wisps of smoke ascending to the air,
past the cars that remained with no driver to take them home,
the wrapper was dancing its way across the Miller Park parking lot,
where four hours before a big crowd saw the Milwaukee Brewers,
it was Richie Sexon Bobble Head Day or a free hat for those twelve and under,
the wrapper did not know.