E.E. Cummings Prize, selected by Regie Gibson
Offering
–for David S. Buckel, Environmentalist and LAMBDA lawyer
who, on April 14, 2018, self-immolated in Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Oh liontail, swing yourself, arc, arch,
strike the match, its shocking bloom.
Flame-haired devouring eye, satisfied.
Lion hungry belly, fill with him,
that you might spare the children.
You fire-breathing beasts of despair,
with all your heads and horns, your
long-tail scales fray the rope, tip
the hope-balance farther, a little
farther, toward no more.
Ting, the finger cymbal rings flawless
into the night. Ting, twice more.
Funeral flares fling embers into our ears
before the final silence, when childrens’
mouths will fill with ash.
Unbuckle him, unburn him, un-
fuel his futile flames, unfossil
the fumes, regold them. Fold
him in our unarmed arms.
Lillo Way’s chapbook, “Dubious Moon,” is the winner of the Hudson Valley Writers Center’s Slapering Hol Chapbook Contest 2017, published in March 2018. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, New Orleans Review, Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, Madison Review, Poetry East, among others. Way has received grants from the NEA, NY State Council on the Arts, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for her choreographic work involving poetry.