Ramon Feliciano Poetry Prize, 2017

Many times I have chosen

the gar breathing on the river’s back

the cottonmouth wide-eyed and crazy

above the blinding sky

 

of its mouth. Night carves the Arkansas autumn.

I have been with you always.

You stare and then

we stare together. What work

 

has not been done by looking

hard at something? You knock

your boot on a headstone

and I ring like a bell.

 

I mean to say—

I went into the river.

Inside it was a tree.

The tree fell.

 

 

 

This poem previously appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and Best New Poets 2016.