PRIZE
POETRY
All love is conditional. The issue with love in the nuclear family is that this conditionality is constantly denied as it is reinforced. It confuses the ‘loved’ and the ‘lover.’
FICTION
The following fall, during her second year in Arkansas, my mother registered for high school. On the school registration form in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, there were three options to select from: N, O, W. Negro, Oriental, White. She wore a pewter crucifix clasped around her neck and her hair in a braid was so long she could tie it into a noose and hang someone from it.
POETRY
My wife is white and so is / my husband. I half-mine the enslavement, / snack on the bitty bothers.
NONFICTION
It’s written on a Friday. It’s written as a letter to my white boss. My very lovely (but) white boss, who I called evil for the first time the day before yesterday.
POETRY
tell me about your day / mariana / about the song you shazamed / on the grocery store radio / the spilled bottle / that soaked the concrete floor / in a color / you called cerulean
NONFICTION
I know my name isn’t the story I want to tell, but it’s all I can give you for now. I’d love to offer you a life story, unabridged, coherent, rendered insightfully, but all I can muster is a few scraps that dance around my first name, its historical, literary and popular lineages, its foibles.
POETRY
a couple keeps kissing / stopped by the old wall / too many palm fronds / and slicked back movie hair / and they don’t know
FICTION
I can hear him through my shut eyelids. Bent over in a fit, I wheeze against the radiator, indifferent to its warmth. Somewhere in the kitchen Jorge opens and closes drawers, each emitting a different hollow note. He intends to bury the ashtray—probably among dirty porcelain, empty take-out boxes, and more mugs. I recover, only to knead dust on my fingertips. The apartment is filthy, that much I can tell. His mother, Angela, may she rest in peace, would not approve.
POETRY
He seemed to reach the moon with his laugh. / My abuelo was the true poet: the way / He smoked his cigarette on the porch like a train
POETRY
I was capsized on a desert island / Parched and hallucinating / When I saw your cock
POETRY
spray paint fucking everywhere queer liberation means a world without prisons
POETRY
ive spoken to the surfbird, los arboles verdes, con los coyotes, with los elk in return they said listen
POETRY
I hit refresh refresh refresh / on a list called Victims / Emergency webpage / Anywhere, USA
POETRY
The telephone rings at three in the morning, the receiver shouts into my mother’s ear: Papá esta muerto!
