We’re so pleased to announce that we have chosen a winner for the 2016 Hudson Prize. A big, heartfelt congratulations goes to Caroline Cabrera for winning the prize with her poetry manuscript Saint X. Congratulations also go to this year’s finalists and semi-finalists. Thanks to everyone who participated in the 2016 Hudson Prize!
Caroline Cabrera is the author of two previous full length collections of poetry, The Bicycle Year (H-NGM-N Books, 2015) and Flood Bloom (H-NGM-N Books 2013), as well as a chapbook, Dear Sensitive Beard (dancing girl press, 2012). She is chapbook editor of Bloom Books, an imprint of Jellyfish Magazine. She lives in South Florida
From Saint X
Why is the world green?
I had something else in mind. I planned
a cat with pink fur. A rainbow of pastel smoke.
Shoot anything from the back of a plane
and it will be part spectacle part threat.
Plants I let die last year: the bromeliad,
the succulents. Plants still holding on:
Sade, the desert rose. My new succulents,
Liz and Cal, write letters to each other
but they still need attention from me. A lot
rides on their survival. Mostly my self-worth.
It is hard to be anything’s sun. I try to burn
but just pulse. I spend a lot of time setting.
I say my dears, I’ve spent eons becoming for you.
I need I need a rest. But they reach up
expectantly. They stare, to be honest.
I know, I am no sun. No mother.
Where did life come from?
If you want
some impressive
origin story
you’re going
to have
to write it.
***
[You were the size of a small shell and then you were a man. The beasts of the land roiled like worms after a flood when you passed. Everyone has the chance to be kind. Your feet were black with the world. Loam is a home. (A home!)
In camp once the girls’ cabin pulled to the side of the roads to cave. Men in the woods smiled and called us pretty. Our counselor smiled—women must smile. The men stood between us and the caves. She turned and rushed us to the bus. Back at camp, we set out in search of a circle of trees we invented; we had all afternoon to walk towards nothing. We walked barefoot in our swimsuits through the draught-ridden lake, thick mud halfway up our shins. It squished and sucked. A rain glittered against our young bodies. We danced, perfect in our slimness, our total unknowing. We were women together; we were only girls.]