2024 Heartwood Poetry Prize

Judged by 2023 Winner Linda Dove

winner: Bleah Patterson

BRUTED / BORN BRUTE

after Emily Skaja

“It’s easy to be angry
about how much hope there is.”
-Emily Skaja

she says I was born under the rock Jesus rolled away and / it has always been,
me narrowing everything, / starking not starling, black and white not the divine / inbetweening,
no I was not everything I was / one thing and I wanted to be that one / thing so fucking
well and then I became the one thing you / didn’t want anymore and is it cliche to say that I am
this running thing? / this one track mind going only straight and thinly forward / or that I am a
running thing, water through a storm / drain with blinders up can’t see anything but
ahead and / hoping that whatever is at the end / is the right thing because it has to be it
has to be it has

Bleah Patterson

Bleah (blay-uh) Patterson is a queer, southern poet born and raised in Texas. Much of her work explores the contention between identity and home and has been featured or is forthcoming in various journals including *Electric Literature, Pinch, Write or Die*, *Phoebe Literature,* and *Taco Bell Quarterly*.

1st runner-up: Ellen Stone

In the pond before turning 65

My arms dive then float, exposed as bone
or ivory root in the pond’s olive mud,
earthy milfoil carried into air by geese
arriving in the spring. Lower fronds
ripple my limbs while I swim elongated
ovals near the edge lined with pine, maple, beech
where long ago sheep meadow hugged woods.

Here the place my mother once rested after skating,
sister on her knee near Grandpa with his wool
flannel hat. An abandoned wooden raft is sinking
on the opposite bank, kitty corner
to the underwater boulder we always stood on,
children in the shallows where we felt powerful
and old. My hands flip in and out, little ghosts.

Feeble light emanates from the burning sky.
Somewhere underneath, huge carp
hug the silty bottom, feeding on debris.
I could be a lone sunfish wriggling in the green,
but these phases of the July moon trail me instead
where I see my mother now that she has risen—
discreet, solitary, ready to disperse.

Ellen Stone

Ellen Stone grew up on the north branch of the Susquehanna River in the Appalachian Mountains of rural Pennsylvania. She taught in Kansas and Michigan public schools for 35 years while raising three daughters with her husband. Ellen co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Skazat!, edits Public School Poetry and advises a poetry club at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in *Michigan Quarterly Review Mixtape, Third Coast, Midwest Review, Cold Mountain Review*, and About Place. She is the author of *The Solid Living World* (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013) and *What Is in the Blood* (Mayapple Press, 2020). Ellen’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net. She is a 2024 Writer in Residence at Good Hart Artist Residency. Reach Ellen at www.ellenstone.org.

2nd runner-up: Shakiba Hashemi

Relics of a Burning Town

Everything burned.
Only memories survived the fire.
That scorched tree in the corner used to hold
the swing my uncle made our last summer.
If you listen closely, you might still hear
my sister’s joyful cheers as she rose
and descended in the air. Right there,
between those two rocks was the orchid
my dad planted. Its branches stretched skyward
like arms in prayer. This blanket of soil laid
beneath the grass I once danced on, my pigtails
seesawed up and down, I rolled around on the grass
and curled my wet toes in the sun.

The love note I hid in Rumi’s book
between the page 20 and 21,
my drawing of mom dozing off on the couch,
the prayer rug my grandmother gave me before she died,
all burned.
I can still feel the fire’s heat. Its flames like the sun
toasting my toes when I was nine.