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2024 Louis Darrell Sage Poetry Prize

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I went to college in Virginia for a year

by Reagan Gorham

 

Fish crawl back to sea. The ocean misses how it grew up, so pencil becomes hypodermic needle. Loss weighs more than the Appalachians but I’ll shrug it off when I see my dog again. I could buy a gun even though my hands are still that of a child. Clutching fur in slender fingers while cats turn to ashes. Watching sun rising in unfamiliar skies. Becoming ghostly in a liminal space then pleading, praying. Touch is so easy to replace but so hard to replicate. If I were a fruit I might be a fig wrapped in leaf, watching birds play house so far from my own. Heavy headed, empty handed I long to call my mother: I want to tell her one more atom, one more sore, and I swear I won’t know me anymore

 

 

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