Amy Lowell Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Dzvinia Orlowsky
I’m Trying
not to weaponize bitterness.
Not to poison or overwhelm when
knocking down doors barely creaking
open or remaining locked.
I’m enabling my tired breath & breasts
to rust & ruin the outdated, overwrought
hinges in our labeled or self-proclaimed
or imposed hallways.
I’m trying to understand complexity, duality,
how a door never swings equally in both
directions, why exits outnumber entrances.
To arrive unannounced, unapologetic.
I’m trying to examine all evidence of affection,
trust gravity in a mouth mid-kiss.
I’m expanding my idea of ownership
to my space and bountiful borders,
all cells & sinew & carnal sound & silence.
I want vastness that motivates;
I need my nothingness acknowledged.
I’m trying to crease kindness & generosity
& listening ears into unforeseen planes
that can’t get carried by storms.
I’m trying to recall weightlessness,
be an unsymmetrical celestial body,
a heart beating the world.
Jennifer R. Edwards is a speech-language pathologist in Concord, NH. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (XLIV) and appear in Portrait of New England, The Ekphrastic Review, Headline Poetry and Press, The Poets’ Touchstone, Lucky Jefferson, and COVID Spring: Granite State Pandemic Poems. She reads for Mud Season Review and is active in the NH Poetry Society and Down Cellar Poets. Instagram: Jenedwards8, @Jennife00420145.