E.E. Cummings Prize, selected by Nicole Terez Dutton
This Is the End of Winter,
This Is the Beginning
I know I should not
pick up by hand this
mess of gray fur, russet
fur. Bones. Teeth.
The holly branch clipped
last fall has waited
here on the ground
since November,
survived the white
of snow, the freezing,
to be slid under
the carcass, to flip
the shell of life into
the hedge of arbor vitae.
I see, I think, a rabbit leg.
And look: The lawn
wants to be green.
James K. Zimmerman is an award-winning poet and frequent Pushcart Prize nominee. His work appears in Pleiades, Chautauqua, American Life in Poetry, Nimrod, Reed, Vallum, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others. He is the author of “Little Miracles” (Passager, 2015) and “Family Cookout” (Comstock, 2016), winner of the 2015 Jessie Bryce Niles Prize.