3rd Place

On Thursday, I remember the visage of a yellow phone booth from down Second Plum street. Decades spoke wonders of the fellow. The paint was chipping and the handle was worn by countless fingers; an equivalent to a confessional. Nonetheless, my eyes peer upon it. There's never a line or long lingerer. It's the most run down phone booth in town. If only the smudged up windows could talk—you think they'd spill any secrets? Maybe there's a secret code to being a phone booth. “What's spoken in the booth, stays in the booth.” Or something of the like.

I spend militant amounts of time
gnashing my inner-chimp to
Justify
Entrails sit in languid writing
Stuffed mindly, biding
Exceeding my own alchemy

Plaque upon the joints
Disjointed by
A lack of puppeteer
Spindle binded tightly
Nightly walking
waking with Head
inside the sink

Pore pretty girl
Hyena’s
Solo-raised girl
Woman by seven
Spread throughout the room

My mask falters
I am so aggravated
by tedious folds in my
mutant Birth

No Bible of yellow stars
could befit this tall order
I pander in this
shed-skin Bed

Steal weather from the
forecast
doppler tells me I am a
Typecast

Invisibility
a strange equine
at the petting zoo
Striped

Binary thought-maps
Trot twice
if you're ready for the
Show

You make an excellently
melancholy Ball Buster
plead with Laughing eyes
through gash and gnashing

I carry too many postage stamps with me—
everywhere I go, I have no regret of it
There could be a chance I stumble upon a post office
and I could write to you every time I do,
even with you right beside me
Intertwined in ink and evergreen’s sacrifice,
words could never dry up in my bleeding heart;
poised and pounding exclusively for you
I would pull out my ribcage and necessary bones
just to makeshift you a mailbox for my prose

Larry Colter Poetry Prize Winner

I salivate at the scent
of my great evergreen,
Tall and embraced
by the spring breeze

Their sap sparkles
in the sunlight,
begging for a taste
Sticky amber on my finger

Insects zip by my ear
with a loud bzzt
I put my finger in my mouth,
subtle sugar on my tongue

Beckoned by the call
of my grandmother’s
caffeinated tone
from the backyard

إِنَّ الزمن الذي عشْنا فيهِ فسوف يمضي
وكان هالفراق بيننا يزرغ قلبي

لو كان عندي فرصة ثانية
أن التقي معك وأعلم أن هذه النهاية

لوجدتك والتقيت معك مرة أخرى
ولو كان تحمل قلبي ما فيه من قسوى

فيمضي الوقت على كل سرعة
وأنا أتذكر بيننا كل كلمة

The time we lived in will surely pass,
And this separation between us makes my heart ache.

If I had a second chance,
To meet you again, knowing that this is the end.

I would find you and meet you once more,
Even if my heart had suffered all its pain.

سأرحل عنك وقلبي معك، وأدفن حباً ما جناه سواك،
ولو أن للعمر درباً آخر، لسلكته إليك، ولما تركت قدري يمضي دونك.

ولو طال شوقي وحزني عليك، فلم أنَم ليلاً ولا نهاراً،
والأكل يغيب عنه اللذة، وكأن حبي فيك جناناً.

أحملك في نبضي أينما ذهبت، كأنك وطني الذي لا يغيب،
أرى طيفك بين يقظتي وأحلامي، فأمضي ولا أمضي، أسير بلا طريق.

تسألني الأيام عنك، فأخفض رأسي وأصمت،
كيف أخبرهم أنك رحلت، لكنك ما زلت تسكنني؟

قد أفارقك في الحياة، لكن قلبي لم يعرف الفراق،
وإن كان للروح أن تختار مستقرها، لاختارتك موطناً وعناق.

They speak of blessings, of futures written,
voices steady, unshaken by doubt.
Hands are shaken, prayers are whispered,
but none carry the name I once longed for.
Gold does not rest on my hands,
there is no ring, no touch, no glance.
Only a decision, made in quiet rooms,
sealed by words I did not say.
I sit among them, listening, nodding,
a daughter, a bride-to-be.
Yet between their voices, in the silence between,
your memory remains—uninvited, unforgotten.
They tell me this is fate, that hearts will follow,

And again, my family gathers for a wedding,
voices bright, joy too great to contain.
I would have been excited, too,
if only the bride walking forward wasn’t me.

Unexpected guests, faces glowing,
smiles bloom across the room like scattered petals.
The scent of oud lingers in the air,
thick as the silence pressing against my chest.

Gold embroidery glides beneath my fingertips,
woven softer than my fate.
The mirror watches with unfamiliar eyes,
a bride wrapped in silk, framed in expectation.

I could open this essay with some tired old cliche about love to tug on the reader’s heartstrings or some highly dramatized “data” about alcoholism designed to scare children and arouse Pentecostal prohibitionist pastors, but the punk in me will not allow the former and whatever is left of the Catholic in me will not allow the latter. The truth is that I am uninterested in the heteronormative definition of love and I am even more uninterested in painting my first real romance in broad black and white strokes; her body always looked most seductive draped in flamboyant, luminous gray.