This Year's Pushcart Nominations!!!

Congratulations to our Pushcart nominees this year!

The Pushcart Prize is an annual anthology since 1976 recognising literary excellence in the small press. It was founded by such luminaries as Anais Nin, Paul Bowles, Joyce Carol Oates, etc.

It is an extraordinarily difficult task to whittle down the countless contributions of our writers into six. 

We are most grateful to Alarie Tennille, our prize nomination consultant, who reads tirelessly throughout the year and makes suggestions for many of the prize categories. We would be lost without you, Alarie.

To recognize the outstanding talent of our writers, we now nominate annually for Best of Net, the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and the Fantastic Ekphrastic Awards.

​Please join me in congratulating this year's Pushcart nominees!

Letter with Green Sky, by Brenna Courtney
 
Sacred Crypt, by Portly Bard

Widowhood, by Sandi Stromberg

On Planet Set by Joseph Cornell, by Mary McCarthy 

February’s Loss, by Rebecca Weigold

You Are Here, by Sheila Lockhart                   

​**
​
Letter with Green Sky

I hope to God that you are silver 
all over. The dock is slick
with ghosts and bird leavings, and winter has ballooned 
into a groaning, glacial 

brain, an animal of which 
even the brooding, 
secular face of St. John the Baptist
would approve. I am curious to know

where it is
you keep your qualms. Mine
are strung around the hip and
jangle lightly as I walk. You would think

they are some kind of dark burgundy,
the colour of shame, but really,
they are a lot like 
what you cannot see — that is,

specifically, the sky 
which has so thoroughly crushed me
into conjuring a 
reason to bear it. Someone wrote me with the confession

that they no longer knew
how to look at a flower, and, you, I’ve caught it
too — the light beams wobble, fall 
off the eye and it’s like 

all that fever
had been studiously misplaced. It’s the same 
with the moon, with trees, with flame.
The silver of the waves. Perhaps you

wear a rosary around the neck, like they tell you
not to. Harbor a flair for rumination. The rowers 
whoop like prophets; I pocket 
the smallest echos. Their backs threaten rain.

Brenna Courtney

**

Sacred Crypt

So well large windows frame eternal earth
as art of sea and sky, of soil and rock,
where cycle of decay will feed rebirth
of life that briefly clings to waning clock.

For elsewhere, you commemorate the works
in gallery you see as sacred crypt
where hope of immortality still lurks
for those that found their eye and  hand equipped

to render fragile permanence as art
bestilling what forever might be seen
as all a witness speaking dared impart
that conscience in its moment could convene

as presence eyes unborn would later share
with artist resurrected who was there.

Portly Bard
 
 **

Widowhood
  
"Yves [Tanguy] was my only friend
who understood everything,"
            —Kay Sage
 
Devoted to the surreal, she wandered
torturous mazes, painted empty
scaffolding when her husband suddenly died.
Depression and decreased eyesight haunted
“Watching the Clock” and “Tomorrow is Never.”
 
It was “The Passage” she didn’t want
and yet brushed onto canvas. A woman
shorn of lover-wife persona. The landscape
of widowhood, its barren fields and
rocky support. Her art’s geometry.
 
She remained faithful curator
of Tanguy’s art. Until she painted
“The Answer Is No.” Until she chose
a bullet, had their ashes
offered to Brittany’s wild coast.
 
Sandi Stromberg
 
**

February’s Loss
                    remembering Judah
   
    Your heart stopped and February
collapsed under the strain
    of the news. A chill caw 
pierced my bones:
    There must have been something 
wrong…as though I had
    botched spinning a wool blanket. 
You were not a mistake.
    Not a mishap. Not a malfunction.
Your body was the size of a down feather,
    finespun breath and skin…
is loss any smaller when it is
    something small?
Lullabies flapped and circled,
    alighted at my feet.  I crowed 
your name as though my wails 
    could bring you back, as though
in frantically turning under the 
    bitter ground I could find explanation, 
comfort, but the field only shuddered 
    and gave up its dead
while God watched in silence 
    perched in the skeleton of ash.

Rebecca Weigold
 
**

On Planet Set by Joseph Cornell
 
I don't have much to give,
a few worn treasures
on a weathered tray
plucked from the ash heap
of a broken life.
Two shells the sea
has polished into pearl,
a row of glasses
ready to hold tears
or fine champagne,
and two maps of heaven,
the swirl of the milky way
drawn like a scarf
across night’s body,
filled with stars
that trace the outlines
of gods and monsters
measuring their way
through centuries of sky,
I offer you these
as gift and invitation,
emblem and souvenir
of the plain magic
that asks nothing more
than wonder, the held breath
of our most profound
attention.
 
Mary McCarthy
 
**

You Are Here

watching a bumblebee
squeeze its furry abdomen 
into foxglove fingers
you’re trying to work out 
how long it takes for a pollen molecule 
to travel from the soil up to its calyx 
you’re getting close      but now you see
another galaxy has formed  
a splotch of swirling grey 
in a pink universe    how many is that now?
you count them   one two three 
five hundred and sixty seven
and the letters too   
directing pollinators to the hidden source 
of happiness     and why not you? 
a message for bees 
can’t be that hard to decode 
it’s alphabetical after all    a matter of 
triggering the right responses

now the rain splashes silver curtains 
smearing pink and cream 
blurring outlines  
its drops tap-tapping on cups
their pipes vibrate with fugal harmonies
truths which must be recorded 
with mathematical precision
using special symbols on graph paper
no easy task     but the beauty of it
oh the beauty of it makes you weep
if only you could grasp   its exactitude 
its magnificent systems   everything
would be     clear

there was a time you could enjoy 
simple pleasures of line   patterns of colour    
as you would looking at an abstract painting
no need to search for meaning everywhere
until one day you started counting
the number of flowers on each stem
the number of bees  ones twos threes
stacking up behind your eyes
and you began to see 
how every flower contains a universe 
that demands investigation
how you could read their messages 
how they insisted on it

you’ll have the answer worked out 
very soon    you just need one more 
tiny calculation 

Sheila Lockhart
 
(nominated by The Ekphrastic Review)