E.E. Cummings Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Marcia Karp
Susan Donnelly’s newest poetry collection is The Maureen Papers and Other Poems. Its title poem was 2019 co-winner of the Samuel Washington Allen Award from the New England Poetry Club. The author of Capture the Flag, Transit, Eve Names the Animals, and six chapbooks, she has published in The New Yorker, Poetry, Agni, and in many other journals, anthologies, textbooks, and online. A poem of hers appears in Poets Meet Politics, an anthology from a 2022 competition sponsored by Hungry Hill Writing of Cork, Ireland. Susan teaches poetry classes and offers individual consultations from her home in Arlington, Massachusetts.
CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO Understand that the “boy” is probably fifty years old, with white hair and a beginning stoop, but at “Pardon me—” he straightens up, spruce, tips his cap: “Yessir, track 29!” "Boy, won’t you give me a shine.” Call it a train, despite the song, since a man of fifty makes his living on it. Then see how the fare that homesick singer paid isn’t nearly enough, how the “trifle to spare” falls from his pocket.