Features

I.

Johnny offers me a hit

\on the truck ride over

/to the lake where we

turn circles

like we used to

when I was still

his daughter, I think now

I’m more like

a son

Outside is

pools of water

black coal boxes

everyone's face

is covered

Outside the birds

are making a

sound

I can only describe

as laughter

the kind not from

bliss but from discomfort

II.

I doze off in the bed of the truck while the men in my life

are down the hill fishing and when the sun crawls out I picture

the heat as a pocket knife carving

into my cheek

III.

I say the sun

on my face

is like the sun

on still water

so when you

touch me will I

warp and ripple?

This poem won first prize for poetry in the Ninth Annual Humanities and Sciences Writing Contest. Judges Kristin Wolfe & Timothy Leonido had this to say about the poem: "We were very impressed with the ways in which this poet utilized form. The spacing and formation of stanzas flowed quite naturally. The poem's language creates an eerie and beautiful tension between figure and landscape. The lakeside setting is both intimate and dreamy. The speaker, almost like a shape-shifter, translates the sensations of this environment so strongly, and even invites the reader to join them: "so when you/ touch me will I/ warp and ripple?" *

*author wishes to remain anonymous.