E.E. Cummings Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Marcia Karp
Mary Beth Hines is the author of Winter at a Summer House (Kelsay Books, 2021). Her work appears widely in literary magazines, including, most recently, Lily Poetry Review, Naugatuck River Review, Nixes Mate Review, The Inflectionist Review, Tar River Poetry, and Valparaiso. A Pushcart nominee in both poetry and fiction, she was a finalist in Fool for Poetry’s 2023 International Chapbook Competition, and Comstock Review’s 2023 Jessie Bryce Niles Contest. As a member of the Boiler House Poets Collective, she participates in an annual Assets for Artists workshop residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). Visit her at www.marybethhines.com.
Waking Uncle Edward All the living and the dead wheeling through these lily-perfumed rooms, plush carpets muffling a century of psalm, bellow, accumulating losses—grandmothers, mothers lip-sticked and serene, childhood rosary beads looped through still fingers— and now, this meticulously coiffed old man settled into bed with his purple heart, cassock and surplice, photos of beloved cats and dogs, palms pressed in prayer for us conflicted deniers kneeling in memory, paying our respects with see-sawing benedictions rest in peace wake up, get up.