Erica Bernheim, of Lakeland, Florida, has won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Prize for her manuscript, The Mimic Sea. The award includes a $1,000 prize and publication by 42 Miles Press, as well as a future reading at Indiana University South Bend upon publication. Her work has appeared in such places as The Canary, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, Barn Owl Review and 26.
We anticipate publication in Fall, 2012.
The runners-up for the 2011 42 Miles Press Poetry Award are
Christopher Bursk, Happiness Anonymous, first runner-up
Cori A. Winrock, Anti-Portrait at Flashback, second runner-up
Emily Toder, The Actualities Came to Visit Me, third runner-up
Frank Montesonti, Quick Study in Unhappiness, fourth runner-up
A snapshot from The Mimic Sea:
Size*
Entryway, the man in the doorway
murmured, or maybe it was incubator,
what you’d call those willing to hold
sixty-two hummingbirds, none bigger
than the common marshmallow, unmelted,
apodiformes, never meant to walk or to rest.
Consider: resting hummingbirds riding
raindrops to gramophones, heralding
concepts like sullenly perfumed lovers
from beyond the pale. Sideways, they
revise their patterns and pray for light.
*part one of the poem, “A Dissimulation of Hummingbirds,” published previously in Canarium One, 2008
42milespress.com 