2023 Pushcart Prize Nominees
"Louisa, Age 6, At Rest" by Christopher Hunter LOUISA, AGE 6, AT REST Louisa alighting into place Always dazzles me. She twists with surpassing grace Into an inverted curtsey. Her arms smoothly interlace, As she gets all topsy-turvy. Until, in sudden about-face, She folds her knees, And flees.
"Sofia" by Susan J Koch SOFIA I cannot disremember three carefree boys dragging a bear cub through Macedonia Square - a ring through its bloodied nose.
"Nicholas II" by John Mitchell NICHOLAS II The ghost of the Tsar walks. He passes some Jews and Gypsies. One curses him; another throws a rock. Bad angels fold their wings and watch. Choirs sang at his birth, Armies moved at his command. God rang the bells When he walked into cathedrals. But now he hears the noise from out the east And sees the fire in the western sky. Death crowned him at his birth, His cousins glittered throughout Europe. He seldom followed good advice And did not ask permission. He lost a navy in a foreign sea And an army gone at Tannenberg, But still he played the emperor. Magnificence is blind and deaf, And death took all his dynasty.
"Beltane" by Alise Palmer BELTANE A boy green shouldered, grows like corn endlessly and over night. There is no laying on of hands and praying him small again. He will not be touched like that. His eyes are the color of home - almond and curious with episodes of Breughel. He wants life in detail and spilling from his pockets. His laughter cannot be attached to anything. It leaves like silver paper geese in shimmering specks and fills the air surrounding for acres at the speed of memory
"On Telling My Mother I Am Pregnant Again" by Rose Postma ON TELLING MY MOTHER I AM PREGNANT AGAIN My mother, who spent the day after my birth trying to decide how to tell my father she didn't want another child but went on to have eight more, says: the doctors will tell you the pain of giving birth is erased by hormones and endorphins scrubbed from the slick surface of every sensory pathway and the anterior cingulate cortex, wiped clean like a school bus window on a thick tule fog morning by the back of your hand, but the pain is still there like the letters you traced with the tip of your cold finger in the steam on the glass, waiting for your hot breath to reveal them again and again, waiting to spell out what agony means. The pain: it's latent like an undertow beneath the ice on a Canadian lake, like a knot held down by the lacquer of an oak tabletop.