Blood Pudding Press's Pushcart Prize Nominated Poems

Blood Pudding Press is delighted to announce its 2015 Pushcart Prize nominees!

My press has chosen to nominate one poem from each of the three poetry chapbooks published by Blood Pudding Press this year.

The nominees are listed below followed by their nominated poems.

Congratulations to  Lauren Gordon, Matthew J. Hall, and Nicole Rollender for these Pushcart Prize nominations.

-"O Tennyson!  Tennyson!" by Lauren Gordon, from her Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Fiddle Is Flood (see the chapbook here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/227601065/new-fiddle-is-flood-by-lauren-gordon?ref=shop_home_feat_4)

-"The Pigeons and the Peace Dove" by Matthew J. Hall, from his Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Pigeons and Peace Doves (see the chapbook here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/236081194/new-pigeons-and-peace-doves-by-matthew-j?ref=related-0)

-"Disassembling" by Nicole Rollender, from her Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, Bone of My Bone (see the chapbook here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/246781871/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_feat_2)

***

O Tennyson! Tennyson!

what is good and wild in my country

nine miserable Nellies from New York whose fathers sell

goods on God’s grass her brother is alive and warm with two

hands and no one knows why but God, God hates

weather, weeds, heart, finally, round as a Christmas orange

crisp as an oyster cracker fished from a woolen winter pocket

you never saw two boys picked up dead and raped naked by a tornado

never knew another word for Indian or an outhouse hole of biting

flies, tiny graves in cellars or oh, that kind black doctor

with medicinal powders and the hair of your parents still grows

long after they’re under find a prayer to fix to water a calling card

with trailing flowers a bonnet that keeps slipping blue smoke cat tails

in your hoops, good and wild, one dead child, one loam son for everyone

(from the chapbook Fiddle Is Flood by Lauren Gordon)

***

The Pigeons and the Peace Dove

my apologies are short lived and dim

like headlights of a passing car

reflecting off gutter puddles

from yesterday’s rain

I wanted to be sincere

but anxiety hurls my goodwill at the wall

and laughs and cuts us with the shards

I should have collected all the tears

I have pulled from your eyes

taken them back and choked on the poison

the olive branch has withered

and fallen to the ground between us

the peace dove is twitching down there

her feathers are dirty like those of the pigeon

and the pain I have handed you freely

and the embarrassment of sharing my tarnished reputation

and the band of abuse

all run too deeply

and though it may not be worth a damn

I do love you and I am sorry

(from the chapbook Pigeons and Peace Doves by Matthew J. Hall)

***

Disassembling

The disassembling: remember when

we pulled apart moths,

first clapping them between our hands, to stun

their flight? Pulling off one dusty wing,

wrenching the other.  Dropping the torsos

in the stream, the water performed the final kill.

Was there an opening the illumined moth

slipped through? Or, did it sink

to be eaten? Or both, the way your remains

lowered in, collapses into earth,

and some other part of you enters and exits

by the ear. The drum shivers as you hum.

Your hair grows longer. The hip is something

no longer examined in the light.

We speak the language of departure. 

One word to you is love.

To me it’s ruin. Or a declaration of war, 

the moth wing your delicate,

plucked scalp.

(from the chapbook Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender)