OUR PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES

 The New Verse News celebrates our nominees for the next volume of The Pushcart Prize:

Published March 24, 2024

UNAUTHORIZED VERSION by Julie Steiner

Published April 8, 2024

TOTALITY by Mary Turzillo

 

Published August 17, 2024

RITUAL HAND-WASHING by William Nelson

 

Published August 27, 2024

HEAT DOME FORECAST AS A SCENE FROM A ROMANCE NOVEL by Laura Shovan

Published November 9, 2024

CRISIS AT THE HEDGES by Lisa Seidenberg

 

Published  November 10, 2024

BARK, BITE, BEG, FIGHT, ROLL OVER by Gabriella Brand

HEAT DOME FORECAST AS A SCENE FROM A ROMANCE NOVEL

by Laura Shovan

Illustration by Alex Kiesling for “What a Heat Wave Does to Your Body,” The New Yorker, August 25, 2023.

“Heat dome builds in central US, forcing some schools to close.” —Scripps News, August 26, 2024

The atmosphere hangs poised above me.

It licks its moist lips, heating the space 
between its expanding dome
and my sweating body. I broil
with the intensity of want—to be human
is to consume. The heat sinks down, 
pressing its bulging temperatures
into my vulnerable places. 
The pressure builds in unbearable waves.
A little death is worth it, I tell myself, 
wishing the brute would finish already.

Laura Shovan is Pushcart Prize-nominated poet whose work appears in journals and anthologies for children and adults. Books include Mountain, Log, Salt, and Stone (Harriss Poetry Prize), The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary, Takedown, and A Place at the Table (Sydney Taylor Notable), written with Saadia Faruqi. Recent poems appear in Gargoyle, Greening the Earth, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

GREETINGS FROM FORT McCLELLAN, 1944-1995

by Laura Shovan

Image source: Transition Force, US Army Garrison, Fort McClellan, Alabama

This is a really beautiful camp.
I found George in excellent health.

Love,_____

                                    Please help.

I was stationed at Fort McClellan.

I have developed a symptom of passing out.

Doctors called it "Syncope".

None of them could figure out

what caused it. 

Hi my name is: _____

I went through Basic training

in Echo 1 company. We had to go through

that building they called the Gas Chamber.

Does anybody know what type of gas

or chemical was in there?

I want to hear from you.

We were exposed to toxic substances,

big time. The McClellan Cocktail:

depleted Uranium, Sarin gas, mustard gas,

and let's not forget that old standby,

Agent Orange.

                                    I drove track vehicles

through dust and mud, unknowing the danger.

I taught troops to make the smoke

that covered the base, was told Fog Oil SGF2

was harmless. We breathed it in for hours.

I went thru the live nerve agent chamber.

They drew blood to check us but never

told us why.

                                    I was face down

in toxic-smelling stuff on the firing range.

They sprayed stuff to keep the bugs away.

They sprayed us in the "gas chamber,"

said I had "sensitive skin" when I broke out

in weeping blisters and dizzy spells.

We were "just women." It's a damn shame

they couldn't tell us what we were

crawling around in.

                                    Tell you more

when I get home.

Author’s note: This is a found poem. The italics in this poem are taken from a used postcard, cancelled in 1944. All of the stanzas not italicized are taken directly from blogs and internet postings by veterans who trained at Fort McClellan. I deleted a word here and there, but have not changed the vets’ language.

Editor of Little Patuxent Review, Laura Shovan was a finalist for the 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone, won the Harriss Poetry Prize. She edited Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems and co-edited Voices Fly: An Anthology of Exercises and Poems from the Maryland State Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Program, for which she teaches. In January and February, 2013, Laura is blogging 44 poems inspired by antique postcards at www.authoramok.com..