2018 Janef Preston Poetry Prize

 

 

I want to write again. I want to write and I want to get back what he took from me. A cold room. A childhood. A carton of orange juice. The murmur of my own body when I lie on the grass. Is it lie or lay? With him it was always the former in pursuit of the latter. He thought suffering was a way to survive. I opened my home to him, I sold him my car, I knew I was being scammed. Write your name at the bottom of this list, then send a dollar to the person at the top of the list. Within months you will be rich. Within months you’ll have forgotten what crying tastes like, uncounted calories on the tip of the tongue. Within months your heart will beat radio static. The doctor, who is a woman but not the punchline, will say she has never heard a steadier signal. This means something. Your hands mean something, and the eggs you break over the silver bowl, the oranges you unravel into one long peel, these mean something also. Your grandmother shelling memories by hand. Your sister slicing moon. A sign that flashes neon and fast: REPAIR, and then OPEN. You pull over in the dark. As it always is.