Pushcart Nominations 2020

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Origami Poems Project - Pushcart Prize Nominations 2020

Our 6 nominated poems - Click title to open/read

{slider What My Mother Told Me - Lois Marie Harrod}

Not much.
She wasn’t much of a talker.

Sometimes a tad.
Be quiet in church.

Mostly cautionary.
Chatter is the coin of fools.

She didn’t know
silence makes some uneasy

and refused gossip.
Be kind, she said

and I tried
to harness my tongue

but the pen proved, as pens do,
that writing is a sword

silent
and sneaky.

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From her microchap, 'Karl's Rhubarb'

Lois Marie Harrod’s latest collection Woman was published by Blue Lyra in February 2020. Her Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks; her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016; Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton and at The College of New Jersey. Links to her online work www.loismarieharrod.org

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{slider Strange Days - Donald Krieger}

...black men ...face ...a 1 in 1000 chance of being killed by police...
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2019

I woke to the governor's
stay-at-home order,
drove the turnpike anyway.
Each cop we passed,
and there were many,
I thought of my white Subaru,
and my skin,
like a thousand times before.

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From his microchap 'Our Shared Humanities'

Donald Krieger is a biomedical researcher whose focus is the electric activity within the brain. His hybrid collection, "Discovery," is forthcoming from Cyberwit in July, 2020. He is a 2020 Creative Nonfiction Foundation Science-as-Story Fellow. His work has appeared in Hanging Loose, Neurology, Live Mag!, The Raw Art Review, Seneca Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Asahi Shimbun, Entropy, Vox Populi Sphere, Dissident Voice, and others, and has appeared in several anthologies in both English and Farsi.

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{slider The New Physics - Diane Elayne Dees}

In these pandemic times,
my house is now a gym,
my house is now a library,
a coffee shop, a first aid
station, a yoga studio.
My house is now my body,
with boundaries expanding
and contracting
like a forgotten figment
of Einstein’s imagination.

From her microchap 'Pandemic Times'

Diane Elayne Dees's poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Her chapbook, Coronary Truth, is available from Kelsay Books, and another chapbook is forthcoming. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women's professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

{slider When Your Granny Panties Saved Me - Katie Manning}

One time when I wet my pants at your house, I knew my mom would be mad. I was too old for this. You washed me up and put me in a pair of your underwear. The white briefs were baggy on my little body and made us both laugh when I ran through the house while we waited for my clothes to go through your yellowed washer and dryer. Then you got me dressed before my mom returned from work. You never said a word. I never forgot. I stood up at your funeral and told this story.

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From 'The Best of Kindness 2020' - Finalist

Katie Manning is the founding editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. Her book Tasty Other won the 2016 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and her fifth chapbook, 28,065 Nights, is forthcoming from River Glass Books.

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{slider Family Farm, 2035 - Virginia Aronson}

Glorious fruit trees, acres of buds
pretty and sweet promising honey
flavored with lemon, mango, lime
the bees plump and circling, dreamy
flights around our orchards.

Lush rows of summer peas
corn, tomatoes, crookneck squash
the soil deep black earth
worms, organic creatures busy
enriching all we grow and eat.

Bountiful hauls of produce to sell,
wild orchids and moon vines, hemp
to make reusable bags for shopping
at the local stands in every town
supporting small farms that feed us.

Heavenly skies, pink sunset clouds
enough rain, enough sun, fresh air
a clean blue lake chock full of life
turtles, black bass and catfish
feed for gators, bear, eagles
red fox living in palmetto scrub.

The glory of lives now gone
back to the future, forward
to a paradise past, our hands
to mouth to mouths, our faces
unmasked and full of gratitude
for what we have yet to lose.

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From her microchap 'Farmlandia, Part 2'

Virginia Aronson is the Director of Food and Nutrition Resources Foundation. She is the author/coauthor of more than 40 published books. Her novel about food and climate change, A Garden on Top of the World, was published by Dixi Books (London, 2019). Dixi also published Mottainai: A Journey in Search of the Zero Waste Life. In 2021, Adelaide Books will release Bull Sugar: A Not So Sweet Novel about the sugar industry. Visit at fnrfoundation.org.

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{slider Brian Eno and the Buddha - Barb Reynolds}

I blast Brian Eno when I wake:

An Ending (Ascent) vibrates

and hums in my torso & limbs,

emanates up through the skylight

and back down, sun spilling

onto the opal tile floor.

It’s Sunday, and this is my church.

I think about the man here in Oakland

who, tired of waking to junk

dumped in his yard,

set out a statue of the Buddha.

Soon, no more trash.

People lined up to sweep

and to pray. They took care

of the Buddha, built an altar,

brought the man more food

than his family could eat.

And I think: he could’ve sat out there

all night with a shotgun, waiting—

but no.

With this one peaceful gesture

he sparked kindness

instead of hatred; humanity

over retaliation. Ascension.

These notes, these chords, these tones—

they rip my whole heart open,

empty it into this room.

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From 'The Best of Kindness 2020' - 3rd place winner

Barb Reynolds spent 22 years as an emergency response child abuse investigator. Her chapbook Boxing Without Gloves came out on Finishing Line Press in 2014 and was shortlisted for the 2015 Rubery Int'l First Book Prize. Barb founded & curates the Second Sunday Poetry Series in Berkeley, CA.

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All work published by the Origami Poems Project is considered for the annual Pushcart Prize nominations.

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