Our Unclassifiable Contest has ended, and a winner has been chosen by our judge, Michael Martone!
Winner:
Flint, “A Villanelle By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet”
Finalists:
B. G. Firmani, “Wilmington, Delaware, in Eight Superlatives”
Theo Greenblatt, “La, La, How the Life Goes On”
John Harn, “18-PP”
Joan Michelson, “Chernobyl Reactor”
Christine Waresak, “Whamming”
Martone writes of “A Villanelle By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet,” this year’s winner, “They say the hardest images for computer animators to capture are human hair and ocean waves. Reading the hypnotically lapping and texture tossed ‘A Villanelle by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet’ reminded me that I was walking through the uncanny valley of the animated body and the lamentation of the delaminating layers of applied desire. This writing floats like a red tide, stings like an anemone. The language is osmosic, the form sublime, plasmaic. There is everywhere the briny scent of the worried inland sea in red weather, the cracker-jacked smell of saving and savory poetry indeed. Moving, so very moving, by for and about moving.”
Thank you to all those who submitted, for stretching our minds and engaging our imaginations! We hope to see your work again next year!