The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize

2010

Two poems from Sierra Nelson's The Lachrymose Report followed by a note on the author   Fake Teeth, Real Baby There's no 4th of July in December (though in this jar, fake teeth, real baby). I don't want you, I just want to sleep in the back of your head. CAN! YOU! HEAR! 5. This will be the last [ Time stops. ] Why didn't you tell me before that red is the undersea of blue?     How to Remember Heat is invisible but rises, like the memory of a tree streams off the orange you hold in your hand. That orange was true as a photograph – it really happened. (Remember?) I believe in love and the way it leaves you – a particle and a wave – until the source is gone and you're out like a light. Goodnight. Turn to the cool outer edge of the sheet. The ceiling heat stroked by the sleepy fan. The smell of orange blossoms thickening the dark. ©     Sierra Nelson earned her BA in English Literature from Vassar College and her MFA in Poetry from the University of Washington. Her poem sequence “Translator’s Notes” won the Joan Grayston Prize, and her chapbook with visual artist Loren Erdrich won NYU’s Washington Square Prize for Collaboration. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Crazyhorse, Painted Bride Quarterly, DIAGRAM, and Forklift Ohio, among others. She helps edit the journal Mare Nostrum and is a founding member of the literary performance groups The Typing Explosion and the Vis-à-Vis Society. She currently lives in Seattle, Washington. "Fake Teeth, Real baby" first appeared in The Kenyon Review Online , and "How to Remember" first appeared in Poetry Northwest.