Honorable Mention, E.E. Cummings Prize, selected by Carolyn Oliver
Old Growth (a golden shovel)
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
–Margaret Atwood
The wonder was how you
waited so long to find a fit,
split your solitary self into
silver rain that makes me
bear a burst of buds, like
a cold wild dogwood in a
spring flush, white blooms a hook
that pull you softly into
their quivering sphere, an
animation your restless eye
cannot refuse, despite a
wish to look away, to fish
for solitary pleasure—my hook
this sudden rising in an
old wood, its understory open
to the rush of your fluent eye.
Karen Kilcup
A New Englander with old farming roots, Karen Kilcup is Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor of American Literature, Environmental & Sustainability Studies, and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at UNC Greensboro. Her forthcoming book The Art of Restoration was awarded the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize.