Contents - 45.2 Winter 2020

Austin Smith, Judge (Illinois)

Judge’s Introduction to “Disbelieving These Deaths, I Go to Sit by Lake Hebron” SRPR Editors’ Prize Winner 2020

First Place: David Groff (New York)

Disbelieving These Deaths, I Go to Sit by Lake Hebron

Runner-up: Todd Copeland (Texas)

Runner-up: Erica Sofer Bodwell (New Hampshire)

Honorable Mention: Kelsey Taylor (Texas)

You can have it all

In the Exhaust of an Outboard Motor, I Talk to Myself and to Grandpa

Honorable Mention: Gabriel Dozal (Arizona)

Dear Crosser, Did You Know That You’re Not Your Body

Madness and Civilization

Victor Basta (New York)

Lagos in Harmattan season
An ordinary lockdown day

Robert Evory (Michigan)

Basil

Susan G. Duncan (California)

Expired

Sandra Kohler (Massachusetts)

Autumnal

David Starkey (California)

Ab Uno

Charlie Peck (Germany)

Dear Kate
Dear Kate

Rachel Landrum Crumble (Tennessee)

When Does Grief Call a Truce?

Nathanael Tagg (Pennsylvania)

It Wasn’t Always Torture

Brad Johnson (Florida)

Kid & a Kingsnake

Sheree La Puma (California)

At First, I Wanted to Marry Jesus

O-Jeremiah Agbaakin (Nigeria)

landscape with mother-tongue/em>

Introducing the SRPR Illinois Poets
Selections from The Book of Tongues
Pedro, No my love
Inês, I’m not sure if it was a Sunday
Pedro, Maps, like ghosts
Inês, You were a tongue drenched in the Tagus
Father, Centuries after your bodies marble to tombs you built
Inês, Magicians, the most truthful tricksters
Pedro, Love is a choice
Inês, I remember how your dress blew
Pedro, My women raise their gods to die
Inês, The only crime of your birth was being born

Carlo Matos, Amy Sayre Batista, Jackie K. White (Illinois), and Simone Muench (Illinois)

The SRPR Interview

Victoria Luizzi (Arizona)

violaceum

Michael Mark (California)

My Father Asks If HeCan Talk To Me as If

Ashley Sojin Kim (California)

Chestnuts

Talia Bloch (New York)

Beginner
In Some He Sees Generals

Katherine Riegel (Tennessee)

What You Deserve

E. B. Schnepp (Indiana)

Baptized in Rock Lake we emerge black-brined, but more holy
Another Moon Poem
I want to be elderwood when I go

Craig Beaven (Florida)

Winter Solstice

Jeff Fearnside (Oregon)

Bearing Tree

Abby Caplin (California)

Regret

Ana Maria Spagna (Washington)

That Night

Xiaoly Li (Massachusetts)

The Wind of Emptiness

Anna Morrison (Iowa)

Loneliest Day of Being Your Mother

Amanda Peery-Wolf (New York)

Response to a Dream—Flooding

Koss (Michigan)

Giving Thanks

Michael Theune (Illinois)

The SRPR Review Essay: Black Poems, White Space