This month another Moon Prize, the 144th, goes to Amy Soricelli’s poem “The Sad Girl from a Private School Wins a Ribbon”

 

The Sad Girl from a Private School Wins a Ribbon

by Amy Soricelli


The poem of the year has four sides. 
It opens like a map
The judges were asked to watch it like
a silent movie and make notes in the margin. 
They were given red pens and tissues,
but most brought their own.

The first judge stopped at war with its 
field of ghosts and broken children.
Spirits hung around each line carrying
bullets in lunch boxes; some of the 
words were backward but no points 
were taken-off. One judge writes, 
the poet wrote from a pen full of dust.  
No one disagreed.

The flat side of the poem took small 
eyes and a wide mouth and shaped them
into flame-throwing monsters.
The poet used all the glass words in her
dictionary to describe her skinny fingers
and crooked smile.
Several judges recused, but most folded 
themselves into her broken spirit.
When she finished painting a mural
out of her shapeless head, she rhymed four
words together and sewed them shut.

Love in seven languages skated thin
ice into the third stanza. 
Unrequited and frayed at the edges,
the poet spilled her mind across
six lines of a broken soul.
The judges understood her need for
belonging and wrote chin-up comments
in the space at the bottom.
One drew a heart but then crossed it out.

The final stanza flew off the page with 
salad wings.  There were pastry sentences 
in powdered sugar and a tall glass of water 
with nothing added in.
One judge grabbed a snack bar while reading
when the strong flavor of coconut filled his
head with Haiku.
He looked around for guidance.
When the poem ended in a sizzling steak,
the judges grabbed some Macallan and 
called it a night.

* * * * *


Amy Soricelli has been published in numerous publications and anthologies including Remington Review, The Westchester Review, Deadbeats, Long Island Quarterly, Literati Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Pure Slush, Cider Press Review, Glimpse Poetry Magazine, and many others. That Plane is not a Star, 4/2024, Dancing Girl Press; Carmen has No Umbrella but Went for Cigarettes Anyway, Dancing Girl Press 9/2021; Sail Me Away, Dancing Girl Press, 10/2019. Nominations: Pushcart Prize, 2021, Best of the Net 2020, 2013. Nominated by Billy Collins for Aspen Words Emerging Writer's Fellowship/2019, Grace C. Croff Poetry Award, Herbert H Lehman College, 1975