Ending on a line by Jack Gilbert Want is still the centerof all living shapes,my daughter included. She’s gnawed off her deadends and scratched her throatinto a ragged line graph. It doesn’t work to tell herfive plus five, if you use both hands,can be a butterfly. Textbook splayed, she contemplatesthe application of integrals tothe area…
There are two piles of documents: the one on the righthas to become the one on the left.There is a paperweight in the shape of a whale. Some pages have almost nothing on them, maybeeight words floating in eggshell space.They have to be read too, so I do, I drift over them. Once I used…
“…they camped at eventide by the River of Forgetfulness, whose waters no vessel can contain…and each one as he drank forgot all things.”– Plato, Republic Imagine you are weary. Imagine you have carried the heftof skeletons for years. Imagine the day you fear death less than living long. Imaginearriving at the blue ribbon of river& across…
Husking the foxtail millet gives it a new namewhere I’m from, the abundant attention staple cropscommand not so different from superhero reboots oneafter another, a man shedding a capeis a new man with a new past. I wanted to explain thisthe time a man in a corner office said he knew a saying from China:“The…
but I knew there were secrets. We all knew and we all strong-armed the chesty life vests back into their shed like lovers backed into closets. Only at that lake did I play spies; only there did I try writing with my sinister hand: Tin of poison in nightstand. But it was just decorum putting those deadly caroms in drawers where no one…
My student spends his summers in city cemeteries,clipping the scruff that grows too close to the stones or anywhere the mowers can’t go. Sundays mostly the death-jilted come, some to pledge the stiffwith a fifth, some to Windex the pane of granite.Some of those leftcome to sob nearer the leaveror, anyway, nearerthe dregs that pool…
In nonfiction, our winner is Jeremiah Barker for his essay “Bearing.” Of his essay, nonfiction judge Esmé Weijun Wang says, “The winning essay captured me immediately: both calm and confident, with a mature voice that carried me through a brilliantly written narrative of trauma. I am in awe of how adept this writer is at…
In fiction, our winner is Sofia Puente-Lay for her story “Vigil.” Of her story, fiction judge Kirstin Valdez Quade says, “‘Vigil’ is a closely observed, richly sensuous, and beautifully rendered story about a husband and wife cut off from their homelands and cut off from each other. Vittorio and Neang are bound by what holds…
In poetry, our winner is Mariya Zilberman for her poem “Against Temporality.” Of her poem, poetry judge Ilya Kaminsky says, “This poem dares to be simple: and, as a result, the nuances are uncovered in the tension between image and time, detail and emotion, silences and linebreaks. We are presented with a number of details,…
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