Shortlisted

 The suitcase is heavy, almost unmanageable.

Oof. Then the other smaller one.

And backpack. I travel uneasy, heavy.

All I own on my person—notebooks, teddies, Christmas ornaments.

10 years dreaming of Scotland,

met with resistance, stony faces, grilled with questions:

If the awards ceremony is one night

why are you staying a month?

I’ve emptied my account for this, why not?

My judge boozed up, forgets his notes on me,

my poetry a second thought.

This heart inside my chest is an Amazon. She rears and claws,

forgetting she is old woman fading, remembers spotlights.

He calls me a name I don’t use…I thought he knew.

My Amazon hisses. She explodes the light.

She winds tendrils of metal around his soul.

She inflates to suck his air.

She leads me over his carcass as I walk to the door,

where they hand me the winning pamphlet

already printed, with acknowledgements by the poet.

I accept with grace and move down stairs,

step out of the building where thunder cracks into applause

and stars roll down my cheeks with the tears.