Survivor’s Gift

Abu Bakr Sadiq Wins a 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize Honorable Mention Award

Every year, we award the annual Zócalo Poetry Prize to the poem that best evokes a connection to place. Zócalo is pleased to recognize four honorable mention submissions for 2024.

 

a garden of irises now grows where my family’s
favorite shopping mall used to be

in the end, i learn, even time
surrenders itself to memory

in my dreams, i watch women who raised me pack
faded family photographs into emptied pillowcases

like shadows children trail blindly behind parents
on the road to refugee camps outside the country

a woman …

Bildungsroman

Yvanna Vien Tica Wins a 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize Honorable Mention Award

Every year, we award the annual Zócalo Poetry Prize to the poem that best evokes a connection to place. Zócalo is pleased to recognize four …

Headshot of Tommy Vinh Bui

A Pill Bug Mutters Makeshift Myths

Tommy Vinh Bui Wins a 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize Honorable Mention Award

Every year, we award the annual Zócalo Poetry Prize to the poem that best evokes a connection to place. Zócalo is pleased to recognize four …

Fire Ants

Fatma Omar Wins a 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize Honorable Mention Award

Every year, we award the annual Zócalo Poetry Prize to the poem that best evokes a connection to place. Zócalo is pleased to recognize four …

Melanie Almeder Wins the 2024 Zócalo Poetry Prize

‘Coyote Hour’ Tracks a Summer in Southern Maine

Melanie Almeder is the winner of the 2024 Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize for “Coyote Hour.” The poem tracks the rhythms of summer in a part of coastal New England …

from Decorporeal

 

After many hours on the road:
   Indiana and the Hell
is real billboard. I stopped
   in Bloomington
needing food. The sky
   so blue Yves Klein
could have painted it.
   I …