2024 Student Poetry Award

Why does it enrage an animal to be given what it already knows? 
                  —Anne Carson


In stance, spotted figments like to conduct
games, too. Although, my hands do not know
what to do with a quantity more than ten. I walk out
and pursue sounding out openings, warm at the taste
of afternoon flesh, a simple so tough and molded,
meandering was never fun. A man claimed God died
in his mouth before wishing me happy holidays. I
wondered how he talked around his holiness, wrapped
myself in logistics on how he makes time for measuring.
A flopped fly sputters in circles with small radii, not
picky for drain, a darting tongue. The noise is too much;
it is hard to finish minutes before they are done. I watch
the machine do its job: fresh-bought vitamin churning
before the now; an orange is orange and round. A stable demeanor.