Search All Winners

Please, excuse my shadow. I can’t 

stop leaving. I don’t know how

to name what I don’t know

well enough to render

in a single sitting. Every poem

about us seems an impossible labor,

like forgetting the face

of the sea, or trying to find

a more perfect name for water.

Daddy shook the box, kicked it, mumbled under his breath something that sounded like it had teeth. He came from around the house with a shovel and dragged it behind him, along with the box, to the woods. He would bury my dog, I thought.

When Blair protested they hit him fairly hard in the stomach, and that was the moment he knew that his life had changed. They called him la merca, the merchandise, and for the next four days he slogged through the mountains eating cold arepas and sardines and taking endless taunts about firing squads, although he did, thanks to an eighty-mile-a-week running habit, hold up better than the oil executives and mining engineers the rebels were used to bringing in.

WEN CHANG

he was leading students in an obscene chant.

SAUL

what'd he say?

WEN CHANG

"u.s.a. u.s.a."

SAUL

oh come ON, that's every titty bar in america.

WEN CHANG

surrounded by student protestors in white headbands. it was a clear political protest. a declaration of war.

SAUL

war?! are you crazy?

WEN CHANG

less than twenty-four hours on chinese soil and this is what he does. how could you do this to me?

Mamá, you left me.   Papá, you left me.

Abuelos, I left you.   Tías, I left you.

Cousins, I’m here.   Cousins, I left you.

Tías, welcome.   Abuelos, we’ll be back soon.

Mamá, let’s return.   Papá ¿por qué?

Mamá, marry for papers.   Papá, marry for papers.

Tías, abuelos, cousins, be careful.

I won’t marry for papers.   I might marry for papers.

I won’t be back soon.   I can’t vote anywhere,

I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.

Rather than a photo, Mona kept a list of her mother’s phobias in her wallet. She was afraid of the usual stuff—death, beatings, rape, Satan—but these commonplace fears were complemented by generalized anxiety over robbers, Russians, mirrors, beards, blood, ruin, vomiting, being alone, and new ideas. She was also afraid of fear, the technical term for which was phobophobia, a word Mona liked to repeat to herself, like a hip-hop lyric.  Whenever Mona longed for her, or felt like paying her a visit, she glanced at that list, and then thought of all the pills and what happened to her mother when she took too many, and the feeling usually passed.