Poetry Contest Winner: God has nothing

Poem Chosen by Judge Erin Elizabeth Smith

“Hope” by Victoria Smith

All time can be contained
in the lifting of one foot
to match the other as a dancer
consciously reaches the end of her
performance, dripping pools of light
water desire I too can end myself now
to begin again tomorrow fast-flung
into a new body. God has nothing
to do with this. It is always time
that hurts us, chisel after chisel,
a slow-dance in sync to a forest fire
somewhere, a still juncture of space
and death where it forms keloids
that could be tumors but are in fact
armour, a sign your body healed
much more than the injury justified.
Why do you say prayer never works?
I pray into every person I transform
by orgasm, though my doctor uses
a psychological term to frame it as a trauma
question: Has your life been ruined by birds,
the way they always sleep like cupped hands
but wake like the rain walking? I consider
slamming the table, telling her you can’t
understand the aftermath of rape
without understanding why we all
have at least once touched our reflection
when trying to fix a kink in our hair,
teeth, body. I don’t remember a single
thing that happened afterwards except
that things happened. Everything happens —
apples rot, vinegar flies, blood puddles.
You can’t prescribe me self-love
in lieu of memory, xrays for a sprain,
celibacy for lack of control, youth
for the absence of men who know
where consent ends, zen for then,
no for yes fuck for oh god stop

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shannan Mann is an Indian-Canadian writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Rust + Moth, Birdcoat Quarterly, Frontier, Wildness, Humber Literary Review, and Oh Reader. She was a finalist for the 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize, 2021 Frontier Award for New Poets and has been nominated for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her play, Milkbath, was selected as the resident production of the Toronto Paprika Theatre Festival. You can find her at https://www.instagram.com/shannanmania

About the artist

Victoria Smith: I am 100% self-made, self-financed. I was raised solidly middle-class in the Midwest, where my parents discouraged me from following my early loves of art and English and pushed a ‘sensible’ career in business. After a few years bartending in Mpls, I made my way to Boston in the early 90s (helped by a 3.8 GPA and a timely promise of health insurance) and never looked back. My husband and I have lived in the same house (ca 1851) in downtown Portsmouth, NH for over 25 years, rehabbing it while working in IT and engineering jobs, and raising my daughter. We are slavishly devoted to our pets and have been giving to charities for wildlife and animal rights for decades.