We are excited to announce the winners of the 2019 Fiction Prize and the 2019 Poetry Prize, judged by R. O. Kwon and Nuar Alsadir respectively. Many thanks to everyone who submitted their work and made this year’s prizes possible!
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Posts Tagged: poetry
Poetry Feature: “my home having come to this” By CM Burroughs
my home having come to this
In the porn factory, none locks her head in a box. None is trapezed or gagged. Everyone wants to know what my inside looks like. And a transparency about the skin. It is not long before one stops his hinged posture and says, “Look at me. I love you,” which my whole body opens to hear, as if it has been uttered before by someone I loved. I give myself as I’ve given myself to a field at dusk—without distraction or thought. Here. My body, my body’s inside. Here. All its tender. Red pulp.
Mirror Neurons: Interview with Nuar Alsadir
Indiana Review is accepting submissions to the Poetry Prize until March 31, 2019. Final judge Nuar Alsadir will select a winner to receive $1000 and publication. Hannah Kesling, our current Poetry Editor, chats with her about the genre, empathy, unconventional ways of “finding” poems. Listen to some of Alsadir’s work here: https://vimeo.com/283671638.
Poetry Feature: “Loblolly Pine in a Field of Hollyhocks” By Vievee Francis
Loblolly Pine in a Field of Hollyhock
There is sweetness, oh yes, there is, like a thin pistil of honeysuckle
gone almost as soon as it’s sucked, like lips pursed just so, like a needled pine
with blossoms at its feet and far afield, and the slobbering bees bobbing punch-drunk.
So sweet, to inhale the late afternoon and the slight damp, hint of dew, or the rain
to come, like the rough lick of animals, a whistle, a rude joke in the ear,
trill of dying cicadas, a mouth of sour mead in the quickening day. Dear,
but not innocent, not the purity of some child, no virgin’s fount—no,
sweetness like joy must emerge from soil, from the torn fruit grown ripe
to bitter, not the penitent’s vision, nor the onanistic ecstasy of a lonely saint,
but the sweetness found in a stain of wine, or the cloy of blood soup, thickening as it cools.
Poetry Feature: “Patrón” by Oliver Bendorf
Patrón
Patrón skips
chemistry
to teach his mother
how to dance.
They tumble
along balance bars
while her pearled
dreams drip
to the floor.
They dance
underwater
in a room
of salty tears.
All the better
to dip you with
he says.
Patrón
she says
how you give.
Some floors
are better made
for grief.
+
Mother he says
I’d prefer
to grow up
diagonal.
She sets a bowl
of tomato soup
in front of him
while he
polishes his shoes.
+
I am waiting
patiently
Patrón informed
a snowdrift.
December
and he’s learned
to dip cookies
one by one
in a cauldron
of chocolate.
Between his
fingers he lets
sprinkles fall
in the shape
of how his
voice used to
sound when
he laughed.
