The Anne Williams Burrus Prize in Poetry, 2017

 

What then, to be over, beyond

recognition?

 

You run your tongue over only, 

like an oil cloth for gunmetal,

 

remarks on construction, a faint

pain in sleep. 

 

Sun declines. Every day happens. 

Interfacing with somebody’s baby,

 

somebody showers

soft vowels over new air 

 

like powder. Sun under, nonplussed

coughs up a lung, calls it a cloud.

 

In the matted pelt of wolf down,

maroon with earth and carcass,

 

you move as though

you could be so suited. Prowl 

 

the streets followed by inaudible 

tribal drum. No one looking. No one 

 

commanding ‘hunt-gather’, extract 

a strand of DNA in the wild where 

 

no one calls it ‘DNA’ and no one 

calls it ‘the wild’. Call it thinnest vine, 

 

call it river runner. Call it spine shelter, 

hide, call it cover. There are so few 

 

ways left, aren’t there? In the morning

you’re back to buying expensive nothings

 

from what’s called The Container Store.

Nuancing ‘waking’ and ‘getting up’

 

when the screen reads Cloud Cover,

and the goose quilt tag reads

 

DOWN, COMFORT. As in,

command to a dog, not wrong 

 

when you sigh between them, 

impressed by only the bed that best 

 

resembles an orthodontic mold. 

You’re told that butterflies used to captivate

 

adolescent shut-ins like a mirror

but don’t believe it. A thin

 

window of plasma sells you  

cutting edge plant based diets

 

and yet further seasons continue 

to bloom and wilt in various windows, 

 

no? Time under and over the city

gushes as though through ancient

 

aqueducts or reverse aquarium ventilation. 

All the sleek girls in trenches 

 

with see-through parasols opening

are covered. It’s not that 

 

you’ve never been under 

for surgery, it’s that it wouldn’t make 

 

a difference. Billboard reading:

How much longer? tapering 

 

with distance. The calendar is but 

a chrysalis in which to bury unsurprise. 

 

Remind me of your friend 

who slept in a coffin. What was their name?