december is honored to present audio recordings from our winner and honorable mention for this year’s poetry contest. These poems are featured in Vol. 33.1; to purchase or subscribe click here.

ravel

lately everything seems glazed i’ve taken

to cataloguing the days by how many

words i say out loud to someone other

than myself i need a recipe for sugarcoated

stuck in a rut should i search for answers

in today’s horoscopes collage all juicy bits

call it age of aquarius looking at the ocean

through a chain link fence i can almost

remember yesterday but what about

two days ago driving south along

the coast the pink pacific kicking breezes

supermoon rising in an ombré sky

i forgot about the moon for weeks

maybe that is a good thing last night

i cheated on ramen with mail order deep

dish pizza worth it this labyrinthine

ravel of hours are we at the eleventh

or the twenty fifth what if this is all there is

virtual survival rise zoom in out again

and again and tomorrow again

i am losing words before they reach the pen

Pantoum for What Remains from Minidoka

A hand-woven doll palmed tightly so the soldiers wouldn’t notice.

That delicate black tea set you buried under loose floorboards,

still unbroken. The nearness of stars caressed through a rough

aperture in the barracks roof. & all that rain seeping in to wet your dreams.

That delicate black tea set you buried under loose floorboards

like a body. & the body of your uncle, forever bent beneath plow & push.

The aperture in the barracks roof, where all that rain seeped in to wet your dreams,

opened the sky, some nights, to that old white farmhouse you’d never see again.

Like a body bent beneath plow & push, your future husband out there

emptying the belly of a bomber on his own country for love of this one.

How he opened the sky, some nights, to fire. How they burnt down the old farmhouse

in your absence. How you cannot stop returning to it, like a lost family name.

Emptying the belly of a bomber on his own country for love of this one.

Still unbroken, the nearness of stars once caressed through the rough aperture

of light’s absence. How you cannot stop returning to it, this Americanized family name.

& this hand-woven doll at 94 you still palm tightly so none of us will notice.