Nathan McClain and Abigail Chabitnoy have selected Michael Lavers' poem "Sun, Birds, and Leaves" from MR's Summer 2023 issue (Vol. 64, Issue 2) for the prestigious prize.
MICHAEL LAVERS is the author of After Earth and The Inextinguishable, both published by the University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared in ...
I'm home from work, reading in bed, when Mom calls to tell me. It’s six in the evening. My boyfriend’s out with some friends of his I find exhausting. He’s often out, while I stay in. We’ve been together for almost a decade, our rituals of avoidance calcified into habit.
I live in New Orleans. Mom lives in Asheville, North Carolina. We talk several times a week. Ususally she makes me laugh with her sparkling anger at a co-worker, a hilarious gaffe she made with a student, juicy details of a power struggle either in her own romantic life or a friend's. Usually when she asks how I'm doing, I deflect. I say something quick—oh, pretty good—and try to get her talking again.
This time, her voice trembles. Her latest scan...
1. CHLORIS HAS HER SAY
“If it’s true, Chloris, that you love me,
and I’ve heard you do love me well—”
was a fresh way for you to begin.
After that you lost the thread a bit,
scorning ambrosia and the prospect
of trading places with kings if my love
were sure. (No kings were offering.)
—from "Anti-Pastorals," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My mom read poetry and gave me the idea that poets do estimable work. I knew which poets were her favorites—Chaucer, Yeats, Pound, and, weirdly, Swinburne. So as a kid I tried to write poetry and would come to her with my efforts; it was one currency of a relationship that...
Before we brush our teeth and get dressed, before
I take two kinds of blood pressure pills and three
fiber gummies, put coffee in one kind of go-cup,
kale smoothie in another, get into the car, I say I want
to have one more cup of coffee in bed and read you
this Ellen Bass poem, but it’s short and then we’ll go.
I am always drinking 1% in my coffee and trying
to tell Josey we have plenty of time. Josey wakes up
saying We’re running out of time! Which makes
no sense. You can’t be running out when it just started!
—from "The Good Work," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I kept a...
At dawn, when I have to pee and there is that dread of standing, and after
I pee and drink a small jam jar of water, you’re the first thing I put in my hand, Pill.
In my palm you’re so perfect and white and round, and then I add
another one of you, broken so that the half-shard is less perfect but still a good Pill.
Lately I’ve been wondering which part of me is me-me and which part that
feels a little better than before when I just couldn’t but did— was that Me-Pill
—from "Ghazal for Pill," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I wrote the poem "Breezy Point after the Hurricane" about eight years ago, I was...
