Pushcart Nominees

fool's gold

Nicasio Valley, December 2016

Over hilltop yonder,

the oval moon glow

leaves a golden arch

crowning its outlines

like Christmas lights

along a distant roof line.

Flipped over,

it would make

the sliver of a smile,

but in reality it’s a frown.

In that next valley

looms a golden bowl

where I pitch

what’s left

of my hopes and dreams,

gold coins

to plant in dark soil

beyond what can be seen,

what will still beam

after everything

comes apart at the seams.

Brian Kirven

Point Reyes Station, California

IT MAY BE

It may be husbands

who love

their wives best

talk about their wives

near the ears of other men least.

When the drawbridge

of the male tongue lowers

with selected confidences—

your reticence

makes a kind of poetry.

Once

on the train to Scotland,

a young traveler so alone you lacked

even solitude,

you saw an unfenced field go by.

A sunlit breeze galloped

through tall grass

to a blue, scalloped sea—

a patient prayer

for your future life.

These days, in a crowded bar

if the talk veers to wives,

you choose not to skate

upon the pond frozen

above what is deepest down.

Rather,

you stand in the crowd

in silence

and wade the tall grass

of a sunlit field

where you and your wife can’t be found.

Mike Dillon

Indianola, Washington

DEVOTED STRANGERS

She could not fall asleep

thanks to all the coughing

coming through the walls.

The man with the fedora

each night became

the man with the cough

who kept his neighbors

awake, wondering how much

longer until the siren of police

or just ambulance, until

the questions, the accusatory

questions: You never asked him

what was wrong? You just said

Good morning? Every morning?

II.

She could not fall asleep

because he could not

stay asleep, because

dying makes a lot of noise,

noise she decided to pretend

she did not hear. Because

the time her dog ran

into the street, that man

ran out and got it back.

And because his smile

each and every morning

seemed to her to say thank you

for letting him spend those days

acting healthy, not just speaking Death.

A. Dearborn Goldsmith

San Francisco, California

Each year the CQ editors nominate especially fine poems

from our published CQ issues for the Pushcart Prize.

Congratulations to our 2016 Pushcart nominees:

Outsider Among Nuns by Carrie Johnson

from CQ Vol. 41, No. 4

Because by Craig Cotter

from CQ Vol. 42, No. 1

Avila Beach, 1911 by Russell Bunge

from CQ Vol. 42, No. 2

Voices We Might Hear by Marilyn Robertson

from CQ Vol. 42, No. 2

The Wind Up Russian Gulch by Jeff Ewing

from CQ Vol. 42, No. 3

Rain by Rosemary Ybarra-Garcia

from CQ Vol. 42, No. 4

We present the six poems in the pages below.

OUTSIDER AMONG NUNS

They are what I want to be, made of steel simplicity,

and knowing that I won’t be, let me tag along, anyway,

a refugee from the outer place they also flee.

With eager gratitude, I weed the chapel garden,

and go boldly into dark woods, to clean the graves.

Rain fell through a mesh of tree boughs,

tapped-tapped here and there on fallen leaves,

and former fallen leaves, mulching it all

into the sweet fragrance of decay.

I did not pray for the dead sisters who,

bedded down side by side in silent absorption,

all appetites surrendered to perpetuity,

wanted for nothing from those above ground and hungry.

One late night in Rome, I found churches everywhere

with doors and depths open to the street. Inside each,

against the wall, a crowded stadium of candle flames

lent room, always, for another. And I, a foreigner alone

in dark hours, seated my prayer among them, and let it blaze.

So it was, when the nuns in denim habits

showed up where the graves and I were, with potato chips,

Lays hosts for all, a welcome dry wafer on the tongue in rain,

but better yet, communion

in that rapture of a salty crisp crush in the mouth

it’s just human to love.

Carrie Johnson

San Diego, California

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