Smartish Pace (a poetry review)
 
 
  • Subscribe
  • Issues
  • Poets Q&A
  • Media
  • Contests
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Books Received
  • Poet Index & Photos
  • Poetry News
  • Events
  • Donate
  • Guidelines
  • Links
  • Get Involved
  • Staff
 
 

    Erskine J. Prize:

  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014
  • 2013
  • 2012
  • 2011
  • 2010
  • 2009
  • 2008
  • 2007
  • 2006
  • 2005
  • 2004
  • 2003
  • 2002
  • 2001

    Beullah Rose Prize:

  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014
  • 2013
  • 2012
  • 2011
  • 2010
  • 2009
  • 2008
  • 2007
  • 2006
  • 2005
  • 2004

Issue 25

 
VimeoYouTubeFlickrFacebookTwitter
 
Contests
 

2012

Winners

  • [First Place] The Moon Is So Smart by Andrea Henchey
  • [Second Place] Texas by Mark Wisniewski
  • [Third Place] Personal Genomics by Barbara Perez

The Moon Is So Smart

by Andrea Henchey

The moon called and said
she wants her own light. Said
if it’s called “Thin French Voyeur”
don’t watch it. Said the delivery man
was right. on. time.

On nights like these, we struggle
to find new ways to say “nights like these,”
struggle to avoid the word struggle.

When that song came on the radio,
you turned it up and said, “Let this
be the anthem for our bad choices”
and I thought of Bad Choices as a place as in:
Bad Choices, Montana, and I wondered
what it must feel like to be mayor there
and then I remembered that I am.

I like how “bright” means both “light”
and “smart” and wonder why people are dim
but never dark witted. The moon is so smart.

The French girl is in the shower
and I can’t help but watch.

I guess that’s what the moon meant.

Andra Henchey holds an MFA in creative writing from Pacific Lutheran University. Her work has appeared in Absent, American Poetry Journal, H_NGM_N, Other Rooms, Pank and The Scrambler. Assistant Poetry Editor for Drunken Boat and Founder of Hartford Connecticut’s Inescapable Rhythms poetry reading series, she lives and teaches in Windhoek, Namibia. Her poetry appears in Smartish Pace, Issue 20 (2013). [bio updated 2013]

Texas

by Mark Wisniewski

I pulled out
the purple down coat D had stolen from her undoubtedly
alcoholic mother but didn’t use because Texas
rarely got that cold & the unused
hangers chimed & from the bedroom where the wine
also was D yelled “what are you
hanging in there?”

“nothing,” I said I hugged
the coat until the chiming stopped thought
about saying more but guessed
what she’d come back with & decided saying
nothing was best

I opened
the apartment door “where are you going?” D called

“outside” “why?” “to put something in the car” I waited
for silence to punctuate the conversation stepped
onto the stoop closed the door the runaway

was still lying on the limestone stairs & now
again
she was watching me
she hooked hair behind her ear as I
walked over the untrimmed grass toward her “I brought you
a blanket of sorts” I said

“of sorts?”

“yes

it’s actually a jacket or a coat I guess but you can
use it as a blanket or a kind
of sleeping bag”

she didn’t move just kept watching I hugged
the waist
of the coat “I mean if you’re
cold” I said & she

still didn’t move so I lay the coat
on the grass near her

“if you aren’t” I said “I’ll leave it here anyway--in the event
you get
cold before morning” I sound like

an old man I thought I turned & walked
quickly toward the apartment “you must not be
happy” she said I looked over
my shoulder & stopped

“what?”

“I was just saying I thought you weren’t
happy”

my throat felt tight
& I wasn’t
sure why

I wanted
to answer without my
voice cracking

Mark Wisniewski's poems have appeared in Ecotone, New York Quarterly, Poetry, Poetry International, Post Road and Prairie Schooner. His second novel, Show Up, Look Good, was published by Gival Press in 2011. His fiction won a Pushcart Prize and was selected by Salman Rushdie for The Best American Short Stories 2008 (Mariner).

Personal Genomics

by Barbara Perez

Honeyed saliva amassed in a vial, and one by one

the world became family: a soldier in Killeen,

an orphaned woman in Guanajuato, a priest

in Madrid, the Tuaregs of the Sahara—too many,

too far in the line to bring home but all close

enough to call kin. At the bus stop, I hear

an elderly man whistle just like our father did.

I’m wary of everyone I pass—a second cousin,

an uncle-through-marriage disowned? Until now,

I hadn’t known the clerk at the corner store

was lost to us, but he has our father’s cheekbones,

his nose. The girl in the crosswalk, too, our great-

grandmother’s curls. She holds her hand out to a boy

who laughs and tantrums like I did at his age,

and I watch them disappear beneath a line of trees

whose branches resemble fingers, resemble arms. 

Barbara Perez earned her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She teaches at Northwest Vista College and works as founding editor for Abject Press. She has received a Pushcart nomination, a scholarship to The Center for Book Arts and the Harold F. Taylor Prize given by the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Bateau, Lumberyard, Ploughshares, Poetry and The Massachusetts Review.
 
 
© 2018 Smartish Pace. All Rights Reserved.

Smartish Pace | P.O. Box 22161 • Baltimore, MD 21203

  • News/Updates
  • Subscribe
  • Issues
  • Poets Q&A
  • Media
  • Contests
  • Essays
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Books Received
  • Poet Index & Photos
  • Poetry News
  • Events
  • Donate
  • Guidelines
  • Links
  • Get Involved
  • Staff

Design and Programming by Wiseacre Design Studio

*