2022 PInch Literary Award for Poetry

2022 PInch Literary Award for Fiction

“I wish they could see / everything that survived, everything / that came back, like the drooping / head of an untended flower brought / upright by careful attention.”

“Her daughter - my daughter - delights in those peach-colored orbs floating in a sea of sugary coral, but her daughter - my daughter - didn’t come home last night from the hospital. The woman, unlike her daughter, returned home to find the cupboards bare, waiting.”

“A circle is the same shape as our children’s eyes when they ask me what’s for dinner and all I can say is bread because Spiros is busy attaching square wheels to our cart since he says the angles will create both the “necessary drag” while going downhill and also deter robbers. “

Contributors: Andres Arauz, Abe Becker, Neil Berkowitz, Will Berry, Katie Berta, Christine H. Chen, Josiah Ellner, Katie Erbs, Kerry James Evans, Willam Fargason, Emily Franklin, Santiago Galeas, Jessica Hammack, Pam Hassler, Jessica Hertz, Kristie Robin Johnson, Kitt Keller, Candice Kelsey, Jared Lemus, Ariel Machell, Lacy Arnett Mayberry, Steven W. McCarty, Mac McClaran, Ben McCormick, Julia McDaniel, Mark Milazzo, Larry Narron, Natalia Olhova, Benjamin Page, Josh Parish, Claire Scott, Elena Selk, Marguerite Sheffer, Tyler Sones, Meghan Sterling, Eric Tran, Adam Weeks, Tana Jean Welch

Emily Franklin is a novelist and poet whose poem, “The Math of Cows,” won the 2021 Pinch Literary Award in Poetry, judged by Catherine Pierce. She has published 16 YA novels. Tell Me How You Got Here (Terrapin Books, 2021) is her first volume of poetry.

“ … I wish / I could show them the widening gyre / of debris choking their Pacific Ocean / reduced to a clear-eyed patch of sea / and the countless animals rehomed / there now.”

“That night she goes out in joggers and a puffer. She walks miles through busy city neighborhoods and industrial wastelands, along a commercial thoroughfare, unnoticed.”

“Of course, Anne Boleyn wasn’t really Anne Boleyn, either.  I like to think she was Mary Magdalene, though I can’t know for sure.  And Mary Magdalene wasn’t really Mary Magdalene, either.”

“It’s hard to explain a life built around avoidance. Any town too small for public transit was too small for my taste in men, women, cocktails, and shouting at starless skies.”

“Abe wanted it to look like a dinosaur, with big teeth and hard scaly armor all over its body. I thought it should look more like a caterpillar, or a cocoon that some ultra-mega savior would spring forth from.”

Contributors: Luke Agada, Khem K. Aryal, Brittney Boyd Bullock, Matthew Burnside, Shuly Xóchitl Cawood, Catharina Coenen, Alyssa Froehling, Fatima Jafar, Di Jayawickrema, Christen Noel Kauffman, Cody Kucker, Catherine Kyle, Ciara LeRoy, Eliot Li, Annell López, Alejandro Lucero, Evan Joseph Massey, Alysse Kathleen McCanna, Fares Micue, Carl E. Moore, Kip Omolade, Fahamu Pecou, Lizzy Petersen, A. Prevett, Khalisa Rae, Todd Robison, Leona Sevick, Liz Shulman, Jayne Sosland, Daren Todd, Seth Brady Tucker, Erin Vachon, Lavanya Vasudevan, Adrian Octavius Walker, Hannah V. Warren, Michael Wilson, James Zhenghui Zhu.

“ and Dad who has many words for any occasion didn’t know what he could say to Ethan besides that he loves him, and that yes, he would be honored to speak, but he tells us he doesn’t know what he will say because so far all he has been able to tell Ethan is that he loves him”

“Her hands were trembling a lot and her lips were chattering. She reached for me and I ducked under one of the cables and hunched over the bed. It was the first time I’d ever been that close to her. Her hand was so dry and thin that it felt like I was holding a silk glove, the kind Anne Elliot, in the book, would have worn.”

“to create the correct carmine stain for the soft folds / of a girl’s final dress, her underskirt tied / about her ankles with rope, her slim ankles hidden,”

“ But it is hard work, telekinesis. My sister grows thin and her shoulders roll forward and soon the smallest things make her tired. Just sitting on the couch in our living room, she sucks down bottle after bottle of water, and I imagine her as a wilting plant.”

Caki Wilkinson’s third poetry collection––The Survival Expo––is a weird family of poems. Beautiful, complex, breathtaking, but beautifully weird. Contained in the collection are a series of oddities like the date who wore a Titans jersey and a coonskin cap, the juxtaposition (in one line) of swamp tours and sexy gun range selfies, and a good ol’ boy selling apocalypse-prep specifically geared toward cats. We see these weird images every day in the modern world, most of us accept it or ignore it and continue along with our ill-conceived plans, but not Wilkinson.

“The younger sibling and a boy, Jonathan suffered the after-shock. The beatings in the tub with the belt buckle after his father stormed out. He’s told me how his sister comforted him when, finally, the house was dark and quiet and he lay whimpering.”

“You visit a Catholic church and get blessed by Saint Anthony. You confess everything in the stuffy booth and the priest is so horrified that he laughs. You visit a tarot reader and pull the card of Death. Gemini horoscope predicts: Life-Changing Shift of Energy, and you burn the magazine in the sink.”