Pushcart Nominations
& Readers' Awards 2020
In October, 2019, readers of Black Bough editions were asked to nominate their 6 favourite poems for a Pushcart Prize nomination. Here are the six favourite poems and runners-up. Thanks to Rae Howells for assisting with putting this together.
Pushcart Nominations
Sister,
am I ever really alone?
I see your body in the underwater
gold light of a dream, you look
like me, only braver. Your curls
the thick mane of a lion, your smell
of hot earth it lingers on my pillow
The medium tells my mother
she has three children, we bloom
across worlds. My brother and I, guilty
of life, hold her while she weeps
Taylor Edmonds
Telling the Bees
Tonight we’ll search the sky for
Caer Gwydion, Arianrod’s
pathway to heaven and for the
brightest of the seven sister stars.
Now the bottom of the garden
feels a galaxy away, as we tread
weightlessly in white suits and
whisper to the honeyed hives
mae ‘di mynd*, turning them
half circle away from the sun.
*she’s gone (Welsh)
Ness Owen
Southern Cross(ing)
To our bones, we’re sailors
your castoff ancestors and mine
greedy for the long horizons
Black water licks the hull, paua-tongue velvet
Sacks fill, the shucking knife flashes an arc, the sky stabbed
to welling jewels of broken nacre
And up there, the crux of it all, those four bullroaring stars
Haere mai, their pointer song a hook
tugging south the waka, laden with stories
of silver fish, and earth so rich for growing
Ankh Spice
yolk
how carefully he cradles it - cupped in a palm
small sun captured in a jam-jar, or net,
a magnifying glass held to his painterly eye
searching for the membrane – a surface tension
whole and perfect, he picks up the quivering
with delicate fingers - takes a pin, pierces it,
shock of raw yellowness: spilt sunlight.
Eliot North
Bloom
Every petal on their skin a mouth
for the light, digesting the sun
to make it sweet, make it edible.
Alchemy at work in the slender bones
slipping from dresses, print by print;
lawns showered by the tattering silks,
the scatter of magnolia feathers.
The trial of the bloom begins.
Reward us for the rains, for the heat.
Mark Antony Owen
Ritual
Oh I dream, and send my wish
inside this light-gleamed sphere
to lift away from all that's dark,
to float on the sun-beamed air. Yes, yes,
the bubble pops, lands on a
branch or thorn or falls to ground.
But what I put inside goes on
to the wish-granting realm beyond,
beyond. And I have other dreams to send:
a string of pearls. One day, I'll follow on.
Kyla Houbolt
Black Bough Readers' Awards 2020
Brother’s Moon Landing
The rest of us knelt close to the screen as
Lazarus stepped out, no longer entombed.
But you ran outside with your Instamatic,
priest-like you raised it to the distant moon.
I’ve looked it up: it was a crescent, waxing
though in my memory it is always full –
full of your belief, despite our teasing –
your camera had witnessed a miracle.
Anything could happen… and then it did.
You would have been 60 this year, had you lived.
Ellie Rees
Tattoo
She wanted tattoos to fit in the small places.
A daisy in the supra-sternal notch, perhaps
and a ladybird or two for her popliteal spaces.
In the ante-cubital fossa she asked for a dragon-fly
blue, with its wings stretched wide, and at the top
of her natal cleft, a crescent moon, with Venus rising.
Sarah J. Bryson
Daguerreotype of a Streak of Lightning
No flash of brilliance, light bulb or bolt.
Missouri June, timpani drum
roll of copper cloud, and the surfaced plate
keyed with scribbles of soaked lightning:
a few hair-lines, cracks
that came before and will again
(the pendulous wasps can smell rain)
but not as this.
This quiet storm.
Laura Wainwright
Note: On June 18 1847, Thomas Easterly of St Louis, Missouri made what is believed to be the first photograph of a streak of lightning on a daguerreotype plate.
Waning
Tonight, I watched the moon draw shadow like a dress,
shrinking to a rib and pelvic curl – below, we starved
a little in darkness.
Waxing
Tonight, I watched the moon peel shadow from her face,
a dancing cabbage rose centre-stage - she kissed our
forearms, set our hairs alight.
Mari Ellis Dunning
Lux Aeterna / nitya jyoti
in the death-churn kanti kayapushti
her left hand melts fear vagdanam dwipam
the moon softens its tug the ocean relents
and breaks into song shanti: shanti: shanti:
from Bhumi’s girandoles stars leap and lance the gloom. As Varaha lifts a conch to his lips
velliccam: velliccam: velliccam:
Jess Thayil
Inspired by (but also stays independent of) a Hindu myth in which goddess Bhumi – the personification of earth – was rescued from the ocean by her husband Varaha, a form of Vishnu, the cosmic preserver. In some sculptures, Bhumi is depicted with her left hand in abhaya mudra (the gesture of fearlessness). Words transliterated from Malayalam: nitya jyoti – eternal light; kanti – brilliance; kayapushti – (physical) strength; vagdanam – promise; dwipam – lamp; shanti – peace; velliccam – light.
Islanders
inhabit the edges, bound
by sky, by rock, by moon-turned sea,
lives lived in the salt round
that inhabits the edges, bound
to nothing, journeyed days crowned
in constellations, the drift of infinity
inhabiting all edges, bound
as sky, as rock, as moon-turned sea.
Angela T Carr
Like your love, snow
is light, each flake made from a breath;
is porous, swallowing my voice; is
hard, a fist, a wedding-white death; is
heavy, pressing, stressing joists;
tells secrets, the heart-prints you left;
lies for you, too, covers your tracks;
loves, its cold an angel’s caress;
thaws, its memory soft as wax.
Rae Howells
Above the city
It's cold up here, icy air filling lungs with
emptiness, a taste of moonlight -
stars close enough to switch off or
blot with one thumb. The sky;
suspended spirals of light, of dark –
I reach to touch the shapes of the universe. The goosebumps on my skin are
constellations, their own galaxies.
Elizabeth Kemball
Evolution 1. Blind to All Before Birth
The light broke while her waters fell, tears flowing
from a hold that couldn’t be held; religion didn’t welcome
wants before wedlock, tell a bucket it’s broken
and it will not be able to bear its burden. Ties snapped
and time slipped in, between us, to drown out connection.
I was born and you; left to bury the burden in your belly
and I wonder if you still caress the scars from the cord
that was cut and the kid you couldn’t continue to cradle?
The light broke and I was born, blind to all that bore me.
Damien B. Donnelly
In a Sentimental Mood
I will not pluck a repetition of these notes
from your rising and falling
chest, slick from a sultry summer
fever. There’s the kick
drum and timpani. Languid brass sets in
your sheet creases. Brine. Clavicle-click. Bell.
O tap each knuckle on fine, extended
hand. My heart is your skin. Panting
and sizzling as we start back over.
Kari A. Flickinger
Apocalypse Now
Carving up marble floors & segmenting stone
cathedrals; gods seek out civilisation by ear-
marking apocalypses. You’re alone now.
Metallic crust stiffens fingernails, pupils radiate
a golden tincture, foreheads plucked fused
emerald pendants. Woefully there are no trees
where I live yet I am rooted. Adam & Eve atop
a throne biding time, gazing over chaos.
Neha Maqsood
what my body remembered,
floating in the pool under the olive trees
Heat has insisted I surrender.
Green-silver olives temper light.
Breeze nudges, soft and warm and tender.
Heat has insisted I surrender.
All falls away, and I remember
peace in this sweet, slow, floating flight.
Heat has insisted I surrender.
Green-silver olives temper light.
Lucy Crispin
How to Grate the Moon
Take this shining truckle into your hands.
Peel back the waxy rind. Let each flake be
perfect, and dazzle the earth as it lands.
Let its curd lie like a yellowbrick road
on the sea. Sing its ancient psalmody.
Grate with care. The fickle bright will dote you,
your heart be snagged by astonishing light.
Kathy Miles
Miners
under lamplight
the bronze age
of their faces
and knuckles
at the surface
they share
cigarette butts
and saliva
Mark Gilbert