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Pushcart Poems

Pushcart Nominees for 2024
(and links to poems)

November 27, 2024 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

We are thrilled to announce the following poets have been put nominated for a Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Press Awards, for poetry published in 2024. 

2024 Nominees:

Click on the poem titles below to read these beautiful poems:

  • “Miscarriage Three” by Cathy Cain, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14), October 2024, The Poetry Box.
  • “Hungry Ghost” by Willa Schneberg, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14), October 2024, The Poetry Box.
  • “Sail On” by Linda Ferguson, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14), October 2024, The Poetry Box.
  • “Beauty Sleeping” by Kim Peter Kovac, published in A Bit Left of Straight Ahead, June 2024, The Poetry Box.
  • “Rodrigo Fails to Meet the Learning Objective” by Ginny Lowe Connors, published in White Sail at Midnight, November 2024, The Poetry Box.
  • “We Do This, We Do That” by Shawn Pittard, published in Witness, December 2024, The Poetry Box.

 

 

We wish all of these talented poets the best of luck!

 

 

Filed Under: Announcements, Pushcart Poems Tagged With: Pushcart Prize

“We Do This, We Do That”
by Shawn Pittard

November 27, 2024 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment


“We Do This, We Do That” by Shawn Pittard, published in Witness, released in December 2024, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.


We Do This, We Do That

by Shawn Pittard

~inspired by Frank O’Hara

It took a while but we’re comfortable now
with my helping her with her shower.

We’re past the self-conscious joking.
We focus on the pleasures

of hot water, shampoo, and a bath sponge.
We take the time to scramble eggs

with parmesan, salt, and pepper.
Spend the rest of the morning cleaning up the kitchen.

Some days we go out to the wildlife area
with our binoculars and a couple of drive-through sodas

listening to rock-and-roll—
Mark Knopfler is a favorite but Elvis is the King.

During late afternoons, we tally up
the living and the dead:

a younger brother living and retired to the Philippines,
two of her big sister’s three sons still alive;

among the dead her parents,
her husband of 62 years.

She says,
I’m your mother?

Yes, I’m your son.
But you’re so old.


from Witness by Shawn Pittard (The Poetry Box, 2024)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

Filed Under: Pushcart Poems Tagged With: pushcart nominee, Shawn Pittard

“Rodrigo Fails to Meet the Learning Objective”
by Ginny Lowe Connors

November 27, 2024 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

book cover image with sail shaped spiderweb at night under the light of the moon
“Rodrigo Fails to Meet the Learning Objective” by Ginny Lowe Connors, published in White Sail at Midnight, released in November 2024, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.


Rodrigo Fails to Meet the Learning Objective

by Ginny Lowe Connors

 

Numbers wheel across the whiteboard,
swerve of swallows arcing suddenly over the bridge

into the evening sky. He remembers that sky
from last night, settling over the city
in its startling hues of indigo and gold.

Without even trying, he memorized the birds,
their geometry of appear and disappear,
feathered unison in the fading light.

But right now Rodrigo doesn’t have the answer—
the integer, the positive number, the solution,
the refrain. All he has is the feeling

that chairs have nothing to do with living (yet here he sits),
that figures are meant to be moving
and that dance, although it’s not for boys,

not for boys like him, would be a better way to answer.
He knows this in all the muscles of his body,
in all the colors of his mind … but how to say it?

Rodrigo squirms in his seat, concentrates
on a wasp knocking itself against the window.
The light’s become a slippery plane, hard, indecipherable

but still the wasp keeps climbing and buzzing, feeling
its way along, looking for a way out.


from White Sail at Midnight by Ginny Lowe Connors (The Poetry Box, 2024)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

Filed Under: Pushcart Poems Tagged With: Ginny Lowe Connors, pushcart nominee

“Beauty Sleeping”
by Kim Peter Kovac

November 27, 2024 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment


“Beauty Sleeping” by Kim Peter Kovac, published in A Bit Left of Straight Ahead, released in June 2024, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.


Beauty Sleeping

by Kim Peter Kovac

 

Submerged on a bed, bleary brain vacillates
in a hallucinatory haze, in, out, & around
a gallimaufry of garbled images & thoughts,

spiderwebbed with neon clichés snapping
on/off as well. Edit. Revise. Edit. Trim. Cut.
A blue pencil whirls in the sea (soup? swirl?)

of wordswordswords. Was I a writer once?
Why are my dreams (dreams?) rife with words?
Semi-awake, harsh white walls surrounding,

patches glued to my skin, multicolored wires
snaking to shiny menacing machines:
numbers, graphs, lines, arrhythmic

chorus of clicks and beeps. Struggling
against belts strapping me down, memory
lights up again: therapy sessions to grok

my wilding dreams and writer’s block.
Dr. Jacob Grimm is a Jungian trafficking
in archetypes, Morpheus and such—

not a Freudian with stupid-ass couch
and sexsexsex. During my 6th session,
lost in word-streams, abruptly a needle

appears and skin-pops my finger, drug
arriving in arteries, coursing & spreading
up toward my brain, tingling marking

the passage till I plunge into deep sleep.
Over days (weeks? months?), am lorded
by the same Grimm, now a somnologist

documenting my dream-narratives in short
segments on his podcast. Ambien patches
speckle skin, lack of writing tools & paper

empowering his theft of my history
and stories and publish them as his.
I must sabotage this scheme and flee:

burst myself out of this sleep-state,
rein in all the wordsimages, herd
them into place, reclaim them as mine.

This is the beauty part.


from A Bit Left of Straight Ahead by Kim Peter Kovac (The Poetry Box, 2024)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

Filed Under: Pushcart Poems Tagged With: Kim Peter Kovac, pushcart nominee

“Sail On” by Linda Ferguson

November 27, 2024 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment


“Sail On” by Linda Ferguson, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14), released in October 2024, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.


Sail On

by Linda Ferguson

 

It’s not a matter of sequins and chiffon.
Of ruffles. Of petticoats.
Or even pink—

although I do love that—

the sandy pink of a kitten’s tongue
the rustling pink of coneflowers baked in the late-August sun
the creamy pink of birthday icing and its tender,
curling peaks—

It was Mom who balked at the sight of me, her boy—
she was the one who squirmed
who screwed on a stiff smile
whose taut, rusted tendons creaked
as she bent to press her ear to my bedroom door—

What did she expect to hear?
I was cross-legged on the floor, clipping pictures from her magazines
to make my walls bloom with yellow-tongued nasturtiums,
with sunflowers, their open hearts abuzz,
with pots of red salvia I wanted to drape
over my shoulders like a feather boa.
I imagined myself enveloped by blossoms,
some with the audacious ruffles of cancan girls,
others as delicate as the fingertips of a glass ballerina
pirouetting on the pedestal of a music box—

That was it—is it!—a craving for options!

Once I slipped into my mother’s room
and tried on her swimsuit—

the stretch of a palm-sized orchid print, the snap of elastic straps,
the pale flesh-toned cups sewn into the lining of the chest—
my boy trunks had none of this—
maybe a stripe, a drawstring, a zippered pocket for a locker key—
just shorts, really—for soccer, T-ball and play combat.

I am—go ahead and say what you think—
aberrant
unnatural
anomalous
strange
sick—

I don’t understand what it’s like to be any other way,
to want to be any other way,
to never wonder how it feels to hold the carved handle of a parasol
to never sense its fringe swaying overhead
or to dab a drop of lavender scent behind my left ear
or vanilla
or rose
or hyacinth—

What is ‘manly’? Wood spice?
What’s that?
And what’s it like to smell of nothing else?
Maybe it’s like being in a box,
a narrow, pine box
nailed shut,
deaf and blind as dirt.

Not for me, aberrant, gloriously sick, sick me:
I’ve twirled through lockstepping crowds on their way to work
I’ve floated down grocery store aisles in a snowy tutu
I’ve wound two strings of my grandmother’s pearls around my Adam’s apple
I’ve trilled my countertenor over strip malls and clover fields
and decked myself in blue and silver sequins to become a splendid sea creature
unfurling my pliant limbs—

Now voyager, I then say to myself,
sail on, swim on
through rip tides and lightning and jellyfish stings,
through the inky secrets of the deep
beneath the glowing moon that blooms in shades of white
and gold and tangerine and—yes!—pink.


from The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

Filed Under: Pushcart Poems Tagged With: Linda Ferguson, pushcart nominee

“Hungry Ghost” by Willa Schneberg

November 27, 2024 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment


“Hungry Ghost” by Willa Schneberg, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14), released in October 2024, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.


Hungry Ghost

by Willa Schneberg

 

Some say you look beautiful since the surgery.
Someone means you look younger.
What I see is you with a long skinny neck.
a throat too small for swallowing,
your belly bloated and bulging.

You say, for love you cannot eat eat—
only cucumber slices and sports drinks
for you.

You won’t sip your mother’s honey words
or suck my chocolate kisses. Is love
a mouth that retches water?

Does your beloved see what I see,
a neck narrow as a vacuum cleaner hose?
Perhaps your fainting is an aphrodisiac to him?

I can’t change you or anybody,
but there was a time before
you had to be the best, when you could open
your mouth so wide a yellow fish
could jump in.

 


from The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

Filed Under: Pushcart Poems Tagged With: pushcart nominee, Willa Schneberg

“Miscarriage Three” by Cathy Cain

November 27, 2024 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment


“Miscarriage Three” by Cathy Cain, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14), released in October 2024, has  been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.


Miscarriage Three

by Cathy Cain

 

It’s hard enough to make a life
Most women know
We of the new moon crescent half and full

Moon-glow mommies
and mommies-to-be or not
We of the ebb and flow Our tidal attention to red
and our wish to contain it

One gush and then another
a letting beyond control
on the towels the faucets and mirror
Riveted by bright stain on skin and floor

The full moon sucking the sea of me
as my body’s shadow slides across
slips into the red eclipse of loss

 


from The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

Filed Under: Pushcart Poems Tagged With: Cathy Cain, pushcart nominee

Pushcart Nominees for 2023 (and links to poems)

November 28, 2023 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

We are thrilled to announce the following poets have been put nominated for a Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Press Awards, for poetry published in 2023. 

2023 Nominees:

  • “Stars” by Andrea Hollander, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#13), released in October 2023, by The Poetry Box.
  • “Mending” by Melanie Green, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#13), released in October 2023, by The Poetry Box.
  • “The Rule of Dew & Tiny Parachutes” by Lana Hechtman Ayers, published in When All Else Fails, released in May 2023, by The Poetry Box.
  • “Beyond Gravitas” by Jarold Ramsey, published in Jump Straight Up, released in November 2023, by The Poetry Box.
  • “It Really Is Just about the Maquillage, I Think” by Amelia Díaz Ettinger, published in Self Dissection, released in September 2023, by The Poetry Box.
  • “Listening for the Rain” by Wendy Erd, published in It’s a Crooked Road, but Not Far, to the House of Flowers, released in November 2023, by The Poetry Box.

 

We wish all of these talented poets the best of luck!

 

 

Filed Under: Announcements, Pushcart Poems Tagged With: Pushcart Prize

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