Poetry Prize 2016 judges Andrew McMillan and Rebecca Perry on ‘Kira’:
Shocking, bold and tender in equal measure, ‘Kira’ is a poem that demands your attention from the first ‘I told you so’. It conjures a world of sunshine, spit, fire milk and snow, achieving the great feat of being both expansive, with its vast permutations of time and logic, and concerned with the tiniest details of living – an earring shining through the snow. The vivid wildness of the middle of the poem is distilled perfectly into a quiet, moving end – taking you completely by surprise.
Waiting for the future to come full circle so I can say I told you so,
Currently, I’m standing in sunshine so bright I can barely open my eyes.
And it’s so lovely and warm. On a day like today, it would be awkward
And fun to be someone else. At each and every turn, isn’t it refinement
That draws us in—the art of saying nothing in vast permutations of logic
And chance, smearing meaning thin across time and accountability?
Everybody knows, that’s how business grows. You are already too late
To say what you meant, I say to myself, so I read out loud to her.
Inside the book of art, a girl in a photo holds up a piece of paper that says,
‘The whole world is on fire and the milk from my tits tastes like kerosene.’
She tells me to spit in her mouth for the first time. Only the romantic dies
Forever and is, therefore, immortal. Turning back to the book, the artist
Says, ‘Hey, can I use these pictures of you in my book?’ and a girl says,
‘I’m only okay with you using that photo if you title it, “the sweetest
Tightest most magical pussy that I ate all day everyday for a week
Then left it to dry out like a dead cat on the side of the road.”’
No one will ever know or care that I went out searching for hours
With a flashlight in the storm, making pass after pass, across the mile
Between the barn and home where I stopped, gave up, looked
Down, and saw her earring shining through the snow, which is why
It’s hard to hear you say I don’t know the first thing about love.
Poetry Competition Second Place 2016
Aaron Fagan has variously worked as an editor for Poetry, Scientific American, and Fine Homebuilding. He is the author of Garage (Salt Publishing, 2007) and Echo Train (Salt Publishing, 2010) and lives in Connecticut.