2021 heartwood poetry prize
judged by Mary Carroll-Hackett
Winner: Bill King
Pre-Carnal Knowledge
Before we do this, you should know that if you unspool
the take-up reel of my life to the moment the midwife’s
scrubbed fingers slip my black-haired head back into
my mother, who closes legs as long and beautiful as mine,
smiles, and says Yes, oh Yes, to a man that looks
a lot like you
until she, too, disappears blue and silent into
a woman gone skinny as a willow peddling her bike
counter-clockwise out of the desert where the owls
she has gone looking for fold their open wings into
Saguaros hollowed by ladderback woodpeckers
long flown,
you’ll find a girl backing out of a kitchen,
having found her mother—head cradled in folded arms
on a Formica table—the side door to the garage still open,
having drawn the last man of her life into a light blue double-
winged Bel Air all the way back to boy-hood, where I can never
see who did what to make him the way men are.
Bill King (he/him) is a Pushcart Prize nominee who has been published in many journals and anthologies, including 100 Word Story, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Still: The Journal, Kestrel, and Appalachian Heritage. He grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, holds an M.A. in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Georgia, and teaches creative writing and literature at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, WV. His chapbook, from Finishing Line Press, is The Letting Go (2018). His first full-length poetry collection, Bloodroot, will be released in 2023 (Mercer University Press).
1st Runner-Up: Elaine Palencia
Turning to Ground Pine
On the days I imagine a time when no one I love is left,
I hope there’s something to reincarnation
so I could put in for a transfer to a remote wood
in eastern Kentucky, just for a while,
like those college graduates who have no idea
what to do next and so go to South Korea
to teach English as a second language
until they get a clue.
I would be ground pine, nestled among fallen leaves
on a rocky hillside where oak, sassafras, hickory and pine
stairstep to the sky
and the breeze is made of green shadows.
I would breathe and delay erosion in my small way
among the tiny undertakers of the woods, worm and beetle.
I would neighbor with mayapple and ginseng,
bloodroot and trillium, chipmunk and squirrel, raccoon and fox.
Evergreen and mindless I would rest,
outside the heart’s capacity to break.
Elaine Fowler Palencia, Champaign IL, grew up in Morehead KY and Cookeville TN. She is the author of two collections of Appalachian short stories, Small Caucasian Woman and Brier Country, and a third, similar collection, Riding the Devil's Bicycle, which is seeking a publisher. Her poetry chapbook, Going Places (FutureCycle Press) concerns her Appalachian self. Her latest chapbook, How to Prepare Escargots (Main Street Rag Press), contains poems about writers and writing. She is also the author of "On Rising Ground": The Life and Civil War Letters of John M. Douthit, 52nd Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Mercer U. Press).
2nd Runner-Up: Jason Melvin
DUST
A small itch
fingernails scrape
across my forearm
one flake of me appears
on the navy-blue pillow
along with a semi-circle of hair
I notice some of me on the lamp base
there we are mixed together
on the TV stand
you me the kids the dog
there we are dancing
in the morning sunlight
streaming through the window
trails of us left in corners
caught in spiderwebs
in broom bristles
a familial concoction
trapped in vacuum bags
how often we must
breathe each other in
Jason Melvin is a father, husband, grandfather, high school soccer coach, and metals processing center supervisor, who lives just north of Pittsburgh. Most of his poems come to him while riding his lawnmower around the yard.
His work has recently appeared in Sledgehammer, The Spring City, The Front Porch Review, Spillover, Olney, Last Leaves, Orangepeel, Anti-Heroin Chic, Bombfire, and Zero Readers, among others.