E.E. Cummings Prize, selected by M.P. Carver
Carla Schwartz is a poet, filmmaker, photographer, and blogger. She lives half the year on an unbridged island in Lake Winnipesaukee, and the other half in the Boston area. She’s a long distance swimmer, paddleboarder, cross-country skier, cyclist, hiker, and haphazard gardener. Carla has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University. Her poems, which reflect life, love, family, death, the natural world, social issues, and the environment, have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Aurorean, Banyan Review, Eastern Iowa Review, First Literary Review-East, Fourth River, Fulcrum, California Quarterly, Cardiff, Channel, Common Ground, Glassworks, Gyroscope, Ibbetson Street, Inkstain Press, Leon Literary Review, Leveler, Lost River, Mojave River Review, The MacGuffin, Mom Egg, Naugatuck River, Oyster River Pages, Paterson Literary Review, Paddock Review, Panoply Zine, Poetry Porch, SHARKPack, Silkworm, Smoky Quartz Anthology, Solstice, Soul Lit, Submittable, Sunlight Press, Sweet Tree, Switched-on Gutenberg, Tales from the Forest, The EAR, Triggerfish Critical Review, WCAI Poetry Sunday, Wild Word, With Painted Words, Verse Virtual, and Zingara Review, among others.
Her poem, “Anthem,” won the May 2019 Lunch Ticket Twitter contest. Her poem, “Wormageddon,” appears as a model poem in The Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics, edited by Diane Lockward. Her poem “Gum Surgery” was anthologized in City of Notions, A Boston Poetry Anthology. Her poems “Rain” and “Wind” were finalists in the Robert Collen poetry contest in Orange, MA. She is a 2023 recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant.
Her books include “Signs of Marriage” (Finishing Line, 2022), “Intimacy with the Wind” (Finishing Line, 2017) and “Mother, One More Thing” (Turning Point, 2014). Her CB99videos YouTube channel has 2,400,000+ views. Learn more at carlapoet.com, or wakewiththesun.blogspot.com or find her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/cb99vdeos), YouTube (https://youtube.com/cb99vdeos), or Instagram (https://instagram.com/cb99vdeos) @cb99videos.
Pat Schroeder Was Our Mother
I want to be ash, I want to be a doorstop
If you don’t stick to your word I’ll call you Teflon
I want to be ash, I want to be a doorstop
I’d be your mother and yours and yours and yours
I want to be ash, I want to be a doorstop
I’m no God but crack sunlight through your clouds
For all those who follow my footsteps
I’ll stick out my neck—make me your doorstop
Give me half a seat and think that’s half a voice?
I can stand and shout—oh, you’ll hear my voice
You can give me shit but I say it’s my choice
to eat and swallow what you give and spit it on your feet
I’ve been a working woman so clean house as I see fit
when the house burns down—ashes, ashes—I’ll be in it.
Carla Schwartz