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!
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)
