2020 Stuart Pitt Memorial Poetry Prize

East Coast

That sad old tower
droops over the town
barely blue anymore and covered in rust
and the sunshine of a diner sign gleams below
trees like twigs are frail against the piercing wind
and there’s ice on the picnic tables this year
colder than the last January where a boy
disappeared in the woods
and
I think I
understand
how a red
bicycle could
vanish into
thin air and how
his family is empty
like that big blue tower
that wears the town name
proudly, even in this January wind
that picks up boys and steals them and -
and when I see that sad old tower haunting a lonely town I can imagine how murders happen on the
east coast