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March 8th, 2020 Challenge Winners
Poetry
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Winner #1

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This Sunday's words:
 
1. doll
2. nails
3. edge
4. separation
5. acceptable
6. efficiency
7. circle
8. press
Florina Nastase.jpg
Florina Nastase
Yassi, Romania

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Hatchling

the dinosaur took me in his arms

on the car hood, like it was acceptable,

even though the law said there should be

a circle between us. the triceratops pointed

at the sky where a bird knocked

into another bird: we should kiss but your mouth

is the hunter’s mouth is the edge of a soft thing. he let me

rest my head on his leathery cheek.

my manager told me I’d never work in a park again,

I didn’t understand efficiency:

could I press play and incinerate bones?

did I not, as he preached, have a god inside me

that would hate illegal immigrants? they

showed us on a doll once,

nails pinned in the plushy, perishable limbs,

to prove there’s not enough space

for two beasts. hatchling, I hope you stay inside,

separation would be cruel. I try not to think

about my birth and his.

Short Biography

Florina Nastase is an Assistant Professor at 'Alexandru Ioan Cuza' University in Yassi, Romania. She holds a Ph.D. in American poetry and spends too much time writing fan fiction online under various guises. She has been published in Gasher Journal and High Shelf Press and hopes to publish more in the future.

Author's Commentary

For me, the poem is about Otherness and the current society's desire to erase several "unwanted" individuals. The line about "illegal immigrants" is ironic, it is the manager speaking (he appears earlier), and he stands for all figures of authority claiming that we are pure and self-sufficient and must not commingle. Particularly now, with the new health crisis, people want to draw lines around nationhood, race, and class, and use arguments about sacred individuality and miscegenation. Whereas in the poem, the speaker at the end is pregnant with the "dinosaur's child" who represents the foreign "beast"/unwanted immigrant, and as such, her child would be unwanted too (and even taken away from her). She hopes the child stays inside, protected from this arbitrary reality, and she considers what her birth would have been like in such conditions. At the same time, the dinosaur is not foreign: he was here before us and died in our stead, and so I see the "immigrant Other" as a deep-rooted self that we are trying to deny. 

Winner #2

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Brandyce Ingram Photo.jpg
Brandyce Ingram
Austin, Texas
Porcelain Ego

Nails press into the edge of an eye

The skin can scream like I can’t

A circle of blood tinkers on the edge of an iris

An acceptable reply

With the efficiency of a bullet

I blink ruby truths onto the doll cheek by cheek

Each drop a clownish blush

Upsetting her store-bought story

My little porcelain ego, the separation

Between a Self and a pretty lie

Short Biography

Brandyce Ingram is a writer, tutor, and jazz-head in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in The Esthetic Apostle, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, OxMag, Cathexis Northwest Press, The Write Launch, Chaleur Press, and elsewhere. She believes Jupiter is the lovable despot of the Milky Way, Lisa Simpson should be granted homo sapien-ship, and cats are alien gods.

Author's Commentary

The ego is a fragile entity, the best-kept secret of human lies. We can't help but cry over feeling fraudulent in a world that asks us to assume varying levels of identity that can be "sold" or "bought" in the marketplace that is human connection. This poem is about the frustration of bouncing between variations of the Self. The sadness of having to do so. The anger that comes from being split in two.

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