JUDGE FOR POETRY
Stacy R. Nigliazzo

Stacy R. Nigliazzo is a nurse and the award-winning author of Scissored Moon and Sky the Oar. Her poems have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ploughshares, and JAMA, among other publications. She is co-poetry editor of Pulse, Voices From The Heart of Medicine and reviews poetry for the American Journal of Nursing.

First Prize in Poetry ($1,000)

2021 Pushcart Prize nomination

How We Live On

1.
The wind empties its pockets of seeds
while I fill mine with apples,
leaving the rest for the deer
whose sleeping bodies etched
the flattened grass.

I take a crisp bite and
am on the ladder,
you holding the bowl,
we are peeling,
coring,
laying slices flat for freezer bags,
clearing the dusty corners
of my mind.

2.
Keep some of the peel,
it thickens the sauce,
and yes, add a pinch more
cinnamon and some slivers
of ginger. It was always your
role to add sweetener.

Your hands,
never measuring, never scolding,
wrists bent in the curve of your paint brush,
knuckles rising and falling with your needle,
thumbs holding bows and wrapping paper,
fingers dipped in flour, shaping bread,
palms clasped together in prayer.

3.
Does your light shine brighter when I think of you?

4.
We are spreading thin crescents over
strudel dough that our fingers
pulled paper thin,
it splits in my budding hands,
and you patch it, a genesis of four hundred years,
collaboration of cultures, handwritten
recipes in dialects, generations that rebuilt lives
between wars, now a living family art.

You tell me of my great uncle
seven days on a boat from Europe to Canada,
the reason I was born in this country,
the reason we make this dish, to remember. 

5.
Keep stirring. Grate some more nutmeg and add it.

Close your eyes and smell the fragrance till it rises
into the room, and you can step into the orchard again.

It is there that I find you every time.

6.
Why is it important to be remembered once we're gone?

7.
Drape a white cloth
over the table,
I tell you of forgotten apples
in abandoned orchards,
now labelled wild or heritage,
commemorated by research.

You once took off your jacket
knotted each sleeve,
stuffed them with wild apples,
and carried them over your shoulder.

During the war,
you once dropped your pack,
hoisted your weak grandmother
onto your shoulders
and carried her
to safety.

You planted memories with those seeds,
your story lives on,
your tree still grows.

8.
I see you in the quilted chair, hidden chocolates,
dangling threads, bare feet in the dew, papers tucked
in creased books, the mouths of snapdragons, unframed
photographs, your curly hair in the rain, ripe apples on
the cutting board.

9.
Wait now, before you ladle it into a bowl. You
have to let it cool first, flavors need time
to lock in.

I was impatient as a child, you once told me.
When I spoke, I wanted you to stop everything
and look into my eyes.

Now I'm waiting,
for your eyes,
again.

10.
Do you hear my thoughts when I write?

11.
You filled the freezer, lined the cellar with preserves.
All for later, next month. You always listened,
always gave - kind words, hugs, love—they
were  part of every day.

12.
You are more than a memory,
you are the ageless hand of time,
the beating clock of my heart,
you are everywhere.

Runner-Up

2021 Pushcart Prize nomination

Coupled

I watched for your return
while everything coupled.  

They spit on leaves,
fused fibers.

After the April snow,
I ran water through the boiler 

until mist covered the windows
where a picture you drew last year 

appeared, just so:
A nose, an ear, 

hair toward the corners.
A surge to the past. 

I peered through the glass to brown grass,
thirsty, 

sipped my bourbon, stole a breath,
prepared for that first long note, 

the cleared throat,
and the sweet pulled from its wrapper.

Runner-Up

A DEFINITION OF THE HUMAN

They have eyes, usually. They take things
and put them in their mouths. The eyes peer out
from the face, choosing what to take.
Sometimes the mouth says, “No.” 

The face sits atop the body. Each human has legs
and runs higgledy-piggledy through the environment—
a zone rich in plants and animals
and abuzz with zeros and ones.

The humans gather food and build towers;
they soar above fields on metal wings.
Below is a chessboard right-angled with roads,
jigsawn with dark rivers and quick streams. 

Their stories are difficult to understand.
Many humans talk in their sleep.
The fuzzy edge between day and night
scans the planet, slow as a hand over skin, 

and the great sphere spins with everything
glued tight—washed by dark, shocked by light.