Fall 2011 Orlando Poetry Prize Finalist Excerpts
LAURA DAVENPORT, “IN A NASHVILLE LIQUOR STORE, I REALIZE I DON’T LOVE YOU” Three days after New Year’s, we are buying champagne. I watch you pull from a pocket the cash you made tonight. Enough for a bottle and a six pack, enough to drink ourselves to sleep. We have come from a party where the room unspooled, a girl collapsed on the sofa gripping a fifth of whiskey. Legs flung wide, her skirt rode up around her thighs, exposing...
“The Dream” by ire’ne Lara Silva
The Dream is this: a balanced life—a happy, loving partner/family; a long, healthy life; abundant economic resources; a lengthy career filled with accomplishments and awards; acknowledged ‘mastery’ of your chosen art; and a harmoniously serene mind and heart to enjoy it all. In reality, we are more likely fragmented and struggling—always spread too thin, always juggling more priorities than we can handle, always trying to carve out...
“Virginia Woolf and a River,” by Florencia Ramirez
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write,” wrote Virginia Woolf. She described this as the “great problem.” Thirteen years ago, two women, within a canyon of red stone and brush, each with copies of Virginia Woolf’s book, “A Room of Her Own,” conspired to bring together a community of women writers (a room) and a vision to finance creative expression with literary awards (money). Two years ago, I entered the...
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