Winner, E.E. Cummings Prize, selected by Carolyn Oliver
You & God & I
You were born under the porch, halfway living and halfway dead.
I watched the door of our house from the underbrush, praying.
You said victory is the antonym of happiness, and this was the only language
I did not speak. God licked the ice and salt from our winter fields.
I shook off God’s language and my elbows turned, my skin grew brindle.
I swallowed so many kinds of wild my breast grew wide, my tongue riotous.
I began to smell even the stars. My lashes grew long like you like.
God did not weep, just stared with that dumb moon eye.
We traced tracks in the snow of our universe. Spring followed.
You led me, intemperate, into the thaw — I crossed over.
The ants went to their war again, and we bent to watch them seethe.
We stood very still, but their little cities were nothing but dirt.
You wouldn’t give up the shape of our dead,
but God swiveled that long neck, searching
M.P. Carver
M.P. Carver, a poet and visual artist, is the director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and co-founder of Molecule: a tiny lit mag. Most recently, her work has appeared in 9×5, an anthology featuring the work of five emerging writers. Her chapbook, Selachimorpha, was published by Incessant Pipe in 2015.