Monday, December 01, 2008

A Pushcart Nomination!

Given the number of small presses, an actual win is rare, but the nomination, itself, is an honor. When I first started publishing I wanted to be nominated so badly, then when it didn't happen, I let that wish go. Now today, with my tooth.jaw into a bad pain cycle from drilling down in prep for a crown and nauseated from trying percocet for the pain, here comes this wonderful nomination from the editor of In The Fray.

The poem is at this this page (All of my poems on the page are illustrated by Mary Hillier, an artist I know and like very much, so it's worth a peek there, too, if time permits). I enjoy publishing in this journal since it includes news, issue discussion, essays along with its short stories and poems.

The Pushcart Prize is a prestigious American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976.

The founding editors are Anais Nin, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Newman, Daniel Halpern, Gordon Lish, Harry Smith, Hugh Fox, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Oates, Len Fulton, Leonard Randolph, Leslie Fiedler, Nona Balakian, Paul Bowles, Paul Engle, Ralph Ellison, Reynolds Price, Rhoda Schwartz, Richard Morris, Ted Wilentz, Tom Montag, and William Phillips.

This is the nominated poem:


Colorless Rooms

In the lineup of old lovers,
he never appears,
yet he was the one who peeled back my skin,
slipped fingers beneath breastbone.
Odd, his disappearance, when a decade
of heart thumps had to pass
before flesh closed and healed.

I wonder if his next love remembers.

Maybe those men who once slung their arms
'round our necks, painted hieroglyphs with lips
on our breasts, wake now in colorless rooms,
bewildered to find no woman beneath them.
Maybe they remember a dimming face,
a distant laugh...a sigh,
& dream of those days when their hands
still forged fingerprints into the hollows of time.



Pris Campbell
©2008

In The Fray, September 2008

16 comments:

Scot said...

great poems--would seem difficult to nominate just one

Lisa Nanette Allender said...

Congrats, Pris!
btw, r u in Lake Worth area? I have a few pals there!

Pris said...

Scot...thank you. I don't know how editors select from the whole group of fantastic poems they put out.

Lisa, Thank you, too. I'm in LW,yes. I know you're in Atlanta. I have cousins there. Small world.

Annette Marie Hyder said...

Congratulations Pris!

Pris said...

Hello, In The Fray editor...and thank you again for choosing my poem!!

Berenice said...

Congratulations Pris!! B xx

Lyle Daggett said...

Congratulations, Pris.

Collin Kelley said...

Yay, Pris!!!! I hope we both make it this year!

Pris said...

Thanks again, and Collin, wouldn't that be a dream??

Brian Campbell said...

Congratulations, Pris! Excellent poem!

Pris said...

Thanks, Brian.

DWx said...

Nice poem -- good luck!
DWx

Diana M. Raab said...

I love your blog....it landed in my mailbox because i have a google alert for my favorite wrier, Anais Nin...

I noticed you are a poet. You might want to visit my blog, www.dianaraab.wordpress.com. Also, my new poetry book is DEAR ANAIS: MY LIFE IN POEMS FOR YOU. Check it out!

Happy holidays!
Diana Raab

Pris said...

Hi Dan, thanks! Diana, I'll visit for sure. Today is 'Mack Truck Day' so I'm in rest mode but I'll get there.

Anna G Raman said...

Lovely!

And nope, I don't think they ever remember.

Good luck!

Pris said...

Thanks, Anna, and I doubt they do, either.