Dudley Randall Poetry Prizes - Celebrating 50 Years!

a shoplifter in amity, new york gets caught on purpose
Mary Elizabeth Johnson

it’s 1975 and it’s so easy to pluck
a vial of nail polish from the shelves of the corner shop.
the owner had a tv by the cash register playing the local news:
they think they finally got the shark that killed the naked girl,
the little boy on the floatie, and the black dog.
the shoplifter sees chief brody’s nose,
sharp and sunburnt, sweat slipping
underneath the weight of his wire-rimmed glasses.
he says he thinks the fight is finally over.
summer has closed its jaws
and people don’t have to be scared of the water anymore.
the shoplifter falls in love.
so she picks up a can of bud light, looks around
(something only an amateur would do)
and puts it in her purse. she picks up another and drops it.
she halfheartedly rushes to the doors and gets caught
as easy as that first shark, the red herring.
chief brody shows up and looks into her eyes,
all stern-like. she wonders if he’ll sing her a sea shanty.
she twirls her hair, wants to be like the dead naked girl,
like ophelia, wants to be caught, drunk,
in the heat of the night. but she’s not even the boy or the dog,
she’s the one with the gills.
movies will tell lies about her
and hunt her down until her kind is endangered,
not knowing that she only took the nail polish
because she wanted to look pretty when the girl-killer came along.

Citizen
Jency Shaji
(Inspired by Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen”)

The words out your mouth and the fake smile on your face have no regard for the fear in my
mind.

	With skin like that and a name that can’t be
	pronounced, you should make up for it.
	Clothes must be American.Hair must be
	American. Accent must be American.

But am I not American? Not according to the color of my skin. Is it not the place of my birth?
I know the difference now:

I ate chicken biriyani at school once—

a girl told me I smelled like it and looked like it too.

I was helping my mom with groceries—

an old man pushed his cart in front of mine, condemning me for not speaking English.

I attend a class with all white students—

they don’t see their privilege.

When I’m on the phone with my dad—

a boy asks me if I speak Indian or Hindu.

TSA checks me for the second time—

my hair could be hiding something.

I tell the class I am Indian—

Are you Cherokee or Navajo?

I’m in my churidar, walking with my husband—

Were you actually in love or was it arranged?

I get stopped every time I go on a plane—

when I ask why

they look at my eyes but stare at my brown face.

Moments of Monachopsis
Dante Lamb

If you want a sound: It is your name uttered
Softly
By someone you don’t know
The name new in their mouth
They play with the pronunciation
ike prey
Or say it like a mantra
Hyperaware of the lip movements made
Soon growing bored of it
Because it sounds weird
And they will ask you anew
Next time anyways.

If you want a smell: Take the hardened air of autumn
Fill it with an apple orchard
Post season
When the fumes of candy sickness waft through the gnarled branches
All of this
Quickly
As you pass by in a car filled
Too fast with body heat
Windows now down
Tumbling air
Whisking away the traces.

If you want a taste: The bitter of an unwashed English cucumber
Will coat your mouth
And make your chewing
slow
It will not be driven away by the first wash
of barely cool sink water
Instead it will make your breath heavy
And prompt you to scrape your teeth
Along your tongue.

If you want a touch: Don’t put lotion on for a month
Wash your hands four times a day
And tell your lover to put on corduroy pants and a velvet shirt
Run only your palms
Over their entirety with your eyes closed
As your fully clothed body
Warms
In a confusion of arousal.

If you want a sight: Look into the mirror
After a day where everything
Has gone wrong
Leave one light on in the other room
So the shadows are now heavy and one side of your face looks
Like a charcoal portrait
Stand there for a time alone and watch
The shadows stagnate
Here
In a moment of stillness.

I am in the graveyard across the street from the McDonald’s
Savannah Sloan

I am in the graveyard across the street from the McDonald’s
I went to every Thursday to grab a chocolate shake
I could dip my fries in. In a sea of navies, blacks, and grays,
my friends and family mourn, mingling laughter with tears.
No two handle it the same, but each one places a white daisy
on the ground in front of the headstone, new beginnings
for all of us. My best friend comes up to me,
or where she thinks I am, to lay a flower down.
Eyes red, not only from crying, she remains the same
and I am dust and dirt and worms. Whole body trembling,
her mother leads her away, holds her close. I could not say with certainty
what brought my mother here, for we never saw eye to eye,
were never cheek to cheek. We did not even speak
after she found out what I had been up to
with the boy who came over on summer afternoons
to eat mint chocolate chip ice cream and watch cartoons,
but she must have felt something, even though I had lost God
and she had lost me. She prays, asking Him to forgive me,
begging forgiveness for herself
for raising a wicked little girl—a sinner. I am next to her
reaching out with hands that touch nothing,
calling out with a voice I do not have
and for whom or what I do not know.

winter scars.
Mary Elizabeth Johnson

My father once broke a man’s hand
while standing on a dirty curb
outside a bar.

That’s what he tells us. Your dad’s hands
say something different each time you look,
changing in your eyes like you’re the funhouse

mirror and he’s the drunk kid paying too much
to impress his girlfriend. It will start with
teddy bears and elephant ears. When his hands

are gnarled with fungus
it’ll be child support. When his hands
are ashy and cracked, it’ll be mittens

for the kids. His hands will never break,
even though he won’t let me
give him a manicure.

Are my cuticles skin or nails?
They’re a part of my nails, but next to my skin. I held
my dad’s hand and asked, “Did you

know that horse’s hooves and elephants’ tusks
and bull’s horns are made out of the same thing
hair and nails are made out of? I thought

they were teeth.” He eclipses my hands with his
and says, “Teeth? Who has teeth on their hands?”
And I said, “The Devil?” And he laughed and laughed

but he never let go of my hands. I thought of hair and teeth and nails
in teratomas. I thought, just maybe, my nails might grow
like tusks through my father’s hands.

*Inspired by the title and first line of Larry Levis's poem "Winter Stars."

S. Franklin St.
Hannah Tillman

“A king’s design, he lived in the law. He wrote the book together with me.”

Saturday, S. Franklin St. behind the old Lutheran church
A white open wall beckons.
No windows, no witnesses. He calls me:
“Bring my bag” and flips the phone shut.
Summer, 2004, and the sun is beginning
To hit the brick, golden splashes like the Sahara.
I slip in, bag strapped, swing it over my shoulder, and toss it
At his feet. The St. of S. Butler—he turns tagging into aesthetic
Historic lecture. I sit back on the cool still-shadowed cement
And wait for the St. to perform his miracle.

A king’s design, he lives in the law of creation,
Mind melting and fluid like the waves of Monona
On the cusp of spring. Paint lids popped off
By young black fingers as he wakes the liquid up,
Exciting it to be born. Paint hits the wall, and he steals
The golden warmth from the sun.
I watch God create the earth then—
He starts with sandy plains flowing like water
Into cracked, craggy soil. I watch an acacia sprout
From the brick, fresh and damp, the Queen of the Jungle rests beneath.
Proud.
His works today a miracle of blood memory,
Buried, dormant, hibernating. In back-alley Madison,
He tagged: You’re it.

He wrote the book together with me
On guerilla graffiti. It requires
A message, a mission. Today he colonized
A small white church in a small white city.

We capped the bottles, packed them away,
And chased the sun to East Wash. The warden queen
Watched us go and languished in her stolen sun and space,
Ready to guard her turf tooth and nail.

She wasn’t going to be erased again.

Jasmina Cunmulaj
The In-Between

…The thoughts of a first-generation immigrant caught in between two worlds, unaccepted by both, neither as one or the other. Dedicated to the in-betweeners.

She Loves Him, She Loves Him Not
Jasmina Cunmulaj

He held the delicate daisy
as he would have held her hand,
between his cracked hands
after years of work.
Dirt found a home underneath his nails
and between his calluses,
and the white petals stood bright
against his dull earthy palm.

Pluck,
one petal floated to the ground.

She loves him not.

There was something about
the darkness and ache in his gaze,
that made me tired.
The way the years
had carved fine lines into his skin.
Like the way water marked the earth,
and formed rivers.
And the hollowed crescent skin
that turned upward underneath his eyes,
rung with familiarity,
inviting me in with a feeling of home.
Smile wrinkles hugged his gently pressed lips
and glanced down

Pluck,
as another petal floated off.

She loves him.

And I can’t help but wonder,
if he had longed for his other half
for she had taken the color
out of his grey cheeks,
and left him
for her longing of another life elsewhere.
And as she left,
his bright eyes followed her,
full of hope,
full of love,
then became flooded with a bleak gaze,
which replaced the vision of his bride.
Twirling,
floating,
in her own field of daisies
dancing under the gleaming sun.

Pluck,
the last petal floated down,
down.

She loves him not.

When I Am Young Again
Indira Edwards

When I am young again I ride my bike.
Mud painted Sketchers turn the pedals like time, a caterpillar in eternal rotation,
Oily gears pumping a metal heartbeat, held down by the animal’s gravity.
There is a heaving, dancing tree at the end of the block
Cornered off by a frizzy hedge, and if you wanted to keep it a secret
All you would have to do
Is brush your open palm to the other side of its locs,
Close your eyes, and seal the memory. I remember in this moment
I am young and religious--
I say a prayer while passing below the bough on two wheels and god grazes my chin upward, an index sprouting past her offshooting thumb. Toward an angel
She lifts me with gossamer wings; I approach the eudicot’s venation with scorpion’s pincers (you see that’s a description i learned later on, when i was older and did know that when i was younger i did not know things that i do now)
Well, I am still here, suspended from my bicycle, this angel’s wings a part of mine.
I observe the broad, milky specimen where light hits;
I observe that I’m a fish and this is the sun filtering through the crest of the tide’s music.
The trunk of the brooding, clay cast tree crashes through a whitecap and whispers to me a loud ocean’s SHHHHH!!!
She does not need to yell at me.
The tree faces me, blood creaking, gurgling through raspy vasculature:
“You remove what once sits upon this earth, yet you are foolish enough to believe that it does not sit upon the earth once removed.”
I watch with beady eyes, tense for her to elaborate--
But trees do not need elaborate.
We are what elaborates upon the veins we seek our blood to reach,
To understand that time and leaves are one in the same--
Not 5 minutes later did I mold to the breast of my home with the ghost of a leaf in my palm,
And not 10 more years later did I molt to the present moment
A breath that the tree had left-- much more than that leaf I believed I had suffocated.
That leaf that never died
In that moment remained in this world
For nourishment, a gift
To birds and mosses and molds and worms,
To all bodies of cotyledons, new venations to groan upward through the soils,
Plucked off, new life and life alike.
I am young again and I ride my bike;
A fresh leaf flutters into an upturned palm,
A secretive, zig-zagging string dangling ceaselessly, embalmed.

m---y
Antony Nedanovsky

“babe, here’s something i just wrote—i think you might like it! it goes like this:

‘the truthful glance you cast upon me felt like concrete poured into a casket
.it crushed me.
crushed me into a pulverized valentine’s card,
you know, the ones with sweet nothings smothered on a canvas donning a bleeding heart;
but this valentine’s card dared to push through to the other side of the cuckoo house nest—
that damned rib cage within this punctured chest.
a noble, humble pursuit
so i then draped that valiant, valentine heart onto the shoulders of blessed pallbearers,
each convulsion of the sealed casket a decree from the tomb:
i love being nothing for you.
and still, my oldest love lives young.’”
she paused, never being one to first speak without thinking:
“hmm, baby, it sounds quite poetic. its meaning is completely lost to me
but it reminds me of a cherished line my mother always said to me:
‘you know m---y,
there’s nothing unsettling in our substance of being nor our being of substance.’”

i stirred from the magnitude of that message’s power—
christ, even in my daydreams the girl’s modest.

Reflections on Almost
Mianna Gonczar

It’s amazing how life happens
And you don’t even realize because
You’re too busy hoping
That you’ve done enough and
You spend all this time
Forgetting that you are still
Doing right now
But in our defense
To live in the moment is not
As easy as it sounds
Because, do I look good in the moment?
I should’ve done my hair this morning
So that all my moments were good
And how do I know which moment
I should live in?
Moments are a minute, a year, a day
I let the moment pass.
I always regret when moments pass
And the regret is always more tangible
Than the moment itself
But I really miss that moment
I knew it would’ve been a good one
Sometimes I spend so much time regretting
A moment that passed
I go on and let the next one pass too
This happens all too often because
Life is just a string of moments
And sometimes I forget that
It’s not like watching a movie twice
A second chance is really just
A different chance
A sorry doesn’t take back the hurt
And even if I buy a new car
It doesn’t take back the fact that
I crashed my first two
But I’m working on it
I’m working on noticing when a moment is
One worth noticing
And understanding that not all moments are ones
To be remembered
But most of all, forgiving myself for letting moments pass
The next one is sure to happen soon

Honey, I Love You
Alexis Carlisle

She bleaches her hair as if she is trying to bleach away the past;
And even though my roots have grown long
I can still remember the burning sense of rebirth.
She soaks in the first blush of the sun
Like a cat bathing in the rays that
Run their fingers through her hair; Long and tangled
With past stories that only come out
On late night drives home from the bar.
She doesn’t remember telling the story.
And when she asks if I’ve heard it before
I always say no
Because when she speaks, it is the spring
Not the cruelest month, nor the one that comes after or before.
She is the month in between.
Skipped in calendars – Bleached out – Lying in the sun –
– Laughing – She is actually laughing –
At all of the things about me that my mother rolls her eyes at
And in that moment I start to understand what love is
She –
– is the month of love
The protector and the keeper
And I wonder why I do not protect her as she does for me
But I’ve learned there has to be a teller and a listener
I let her tell
Because out of her mouth sprout flowers and perfume
And I am just the schoolboy
Who forms his first crush on Persephone
Not knowing she is the eternal spring
She melts in the passenger seat of my car
With the seat warmer on she melts like honey
The weather is most unstable in spring
But she doesn’t know, the voices she hears
Are just the bees at work building honeycombs in her hair
Lightweight, but stronger than you could ever imagine
The man outside the bar told us that spring is here
And she will not back down
She is two swords and no armor
She is honey with arsenic
The month that no one can see, nor can they pronounce,
She is the first blossom and the first crush,
She is as unstable as spring and twice the beauty
But will slap the mouth that calls her beautiful
And tell them “I. Am. Smart.” Brighter than the sun.
But also, right now, asleep like the moon.
Behind me I can hear her purr with golden strands,
Basking in the sunlight.
And it is all of this that is stored in the body of a girl
And the underestimation of such feminine power is punishable by damnation
That pulls Persephone back down.
But please, be cautioned, because like the sun,
She will rise again.

A Note to My Father
Jasmina Cunmulaj

You placed your hand
over mine
that grasped the fishing pole
so tightly,
as you whispered
the winning strategy
and performed
a rhythmic jerk
like a marionette,
playing his puppet
and danced the invisible line across the pond
that reflected
a shadow
of a moment in time.
And as the line pulled
and rippled a crack
down the middle,
a silver-breasted fish soared out, like a newborn
wailing for a first breath
of oxygen.
But quickly delved back
into the one-way mirror,
and released our connection,that was held simply by string. Just as the ripple calmed,
the shadow of our bond that once casted over the grey waters, vanished with the sun.
And with every sunrise overlooking the pond,
I hoped it would return
with you,
once again.

I wonder
Jazmin Nevarez

I wonder what it’s like,
to live in a house
That doesn’t chip from the ceilings,
Into our Holy Water bottles
That Tita uses to bless our doors, daughters and foreheads.
I wonder.

I wonder what it’s like, to live in a house
Without missing shingles on the roof,
walls that are finished,
fresh paint-covered plaster
Scratch-resistant, bulletproof.
I wonder.

I wonder what it’s like
To not live in fear of the Red Line.
Especially on summer nights alone,
In one ear-headphone. Waiting, watching
Cityscapes with high rises too pretty to see
My South Side home,
I wonder.

I wonder
I wonder what it’s like to permanently live in a house
Where the windows and doors have molding
And white picket fences are in view.
A bedroom to myself,
No urge to record silver badges on front lawns
Just in case another Black and Brown life
Is taken too soon. I wonder.

I wonder what it’s like
To live with a deep, dwelling security.
Not having to fight
consistently for equality.
A tiring effort, unfortunate example of timeless
Time and again.
I wonder.

I wonder what it’s like
To live with peace of mind.
Without the thought of my 9-year-old brother
Wearing a transparent backpack to school.
Walking through metal detectors before class
Because, maybe, just maybe
His classmate’s father left his nine
Unlocked, easy access
To protect himself, his family, his pride–a true Sugarman, in his prime.
I wonder.

I wonder what it’s like to live
Outside the confines of condensed, cramped
Almost-sweltering poverty.
Polluted danger forced upon us,
Away from suburban and lavish properties
That unsuccessfully attempt to suck the soul from what is left of our woods.
Moving in on us.
Capitalizing off our soon-be-gentrified neighborHoods.
I wonder.

Things I've Found While Cleaning My Room
Alexis Carlisle

1. The band aid you gave me when we were in 8th grade when I thought we were going to get married, I never took it out of the wrapper and for some reason I’ve kept it in the same box I keep money.
2. A pearl necklace that my dad added a pearl to each year on my birthday; it is now a complete never ending loop.
3. Anna Nicole Smith’s biography where most would keep a bible, I know her holy words better than Father Joseph knows the scripture.
4. A receipt that slipped out of his pocket and I shoved it into mine to remember a time when I loved him.
5. The stereotypical half eaten rotten apple that only the grossest people keep under their bed.
6. A student written postcard from Alma College I received as a junior, I kept it not because of an overwhelming interest in the college, but rather because I felt like Cody class of 2014 really cared even with no picture on the card I cried because I loved Cody class of 2014 so much.
7. A 16th birthday card from my dad, the inside said “I will always love you, no matter if we are together or apart” it was the first time I realized he completely understood what 16 meant.
8. The picture I was drawing in math class the first time I ever pierced my own skin on purpose it was only half finished and some things are better incomplete.
9. A miniature pin from a miniature bowling set I threw away during a panic attack I threw away 2 garbage bags full of things that day and I cried the entire time as my mother kept on saying “you don’t have to do this”.
10. A very tiny pencil...You snapped my pencil in half the day you didn’t have one and you then sharpened the half with the eraser and gave it back, I taped it to my wall in memoriam of the senior boy who put the sad sophomore girl first.
11. I found some notes that I took when while talking on the phone to you when were best friends and you were telling me about how you wanted to become a pilot because you were chasing the crash and you said “it will be sunny and I will go down quick” as I continued to cry you told me it would be fine, that you would die quickly and it wouldn’t hurt that bad.  I couldn’t fall asleep that night.
12. A spider that I was going to kill but started to appreciate the mutual comfort we both felt living together.
13. A water bottle with her chewed gum stuck to the side of it I kept on my bedside table for weeks as a reminder that she had been in my room, she had been in my bed.
14. Ripped nylons that I promised my mother would last me until New Year’s but it was only November and they were very ruined.
15. Diamond earrings my dad gave me for my sixteenth birthday, I held them in my hand for a minute wondering why he gave them to me.  I was turning 16 years old not 23, and that’s when it hit me, that my dad understood that he would never see 23 or 46 or 17.  He understood how everything happens suddenly and at once and I didn’t even understand the situation enough to write a goddamn eulogy.
16. 16 will mean more to me than 21 ever could, more than a 21 gun salute and the bullet shell casing from the ceremony on my nightstand there will always be a weight on 16 and goal on his 66. I finish dusting off old memories and shove most of them back under my bed and as I leave no matter how many times I try the switch, I can’t turn off the light.

Bradley
Patrick Redigan

I remember the dashboard,
the trashed ashtray woefully
overcrowded with
discarded bubblegum and
lipstick-pinched Camels

Beside lay a royal blue sticker:
simple and shiny reminding her
“one day at a time”
the fever mantra, the
words she pledged her life to.
Her gold medallion
hung from the rearview mirror
but we knew there was no sense
in looking back.

Ten years clean, or so it seemed
I never could tell when she closed her eyes
and hid her hands beneath our table.
A high-strung junkie for Jesus, watch as she
drowns her sorrows in his blood,
stained like the glass, the depiction

of the blessed mother that
hung on the living room wall
beside my 7th grade portrait made
crooked by my clumsy fingers.
The gaze of the virgin caught me
dead in my tracks, my heart was
hers to hold. The features were soft and
her shawl was the shade of a dream,
a creamy bluish-green like the little eyes on
my little face. I close them
for my nightly prayers,
but when I wake, I want to face my fears
and no longer force my smiles. To
speak my mind, love my enemies and to
test the waters of a fiery lake and
cool my tongue with the serpentine
mercury of ceaseless self-discovery.
I want a puppy.

I want to be someone new, someone cool
too free to be me, too true to be you.
I want creation.

But placed beside expired plates,
a grey and faded sticker pasted
hastily long ago:
a word, a whimper

One last commandment heard
high above the demon hiss of the
rusted exhaust pipe, fuzzed slightly
by a ghostly sneeze of smoke.

It spits in the face
of my mother’s embrace,
murmured into ears too
broken to be bothered:
coexist.

Frustration While Watching the Evening News
Erin Stein

“It’s about the children here, Huel.”

The News shares a mini-documentary on how

Michigan let toxic water corrode pipes

and how it has seeped into people’s bloodstreams,

as if they need more negativity in their systems.

“88 schools were closed, how does that help the children?”

A fancy(ish) man in a cheap looking suit, (let his dress define him)

paired with an even cheaper tie— pipes in to remind the three social justice soldiers that strikes

are unconstitutional. And that it’s immoral to stand up for better rights.

The Suit must have never read Jeremy Bentham or Martin Luther King Jr.

“Were any of the members involved fired?”

Of course not, they kindly stepped down, because resigning

looks more noble than getting ripped of one’s title.

But then again, teeth falling out because gums can’t hold

bone anymore doesn’t look that noble either.

“You should let the parents know if another sick out is planned, it’s only fair.”

The term fair seems to bite a little,

it is filled with ironic venom that does not go unnoticed.

When the textbooks used in these ancient ruins of schools don’t include the last

two presidents, nor the Recession, that seems to ring more to the hymn of unfairness.

What’s unfair is daydreaming in class and looking up to see the bleak

heavens poke out between the cracks in the ceiling, while rocking in a desk that has barely two legs.

It’s walking down a hallway and seeing bits of nature take over the cracks were the

Foundation (ha!) of the building meet dirt.

But don’t worry Suit, this picture of history will make its way into books

that hopefully everyone will get to read.

beads
Patrick Redigan

"hail mary, full of grace
I’ve been given this glorious rosary”
red threaded beads like Jesus blood
to assure she stays a good girl. 

a decade for the boys overseas
and one for johnny kennedy.
say a prayer for patti hearst,
saint catherine protect my purity

 the gospel according to luke-
who picked sunflowers and
bought her cracker jacks
a catholic and a gentleman 

he took her hand
she took his name
   slowly
   slipping
into suburban obscurity
though their love was real
and shapeless like the night.

she took a job as a secretary
he found work in Ford’s assembly lines
salt of the earth, middle of the pack
lord knows

three babies broke out, two boys
and a girl, I believe. They said their
prayers and avoided swears
and soon became soldiers of Christ,
cheeks slapped by the wicked bishop,
knuckles bruised by Sr. Sarah’s
yardstick

the children had children and
they were very good. The girl
(who, as a grandmother, ate chocolates
and watched televised mass
on her floral-print sofa)
closed her eyes
her wooden box was overpriced and
her bones were cloaked in a
matronly shawl
and her rosary
was wrapped around
her world-weary fingers