Poet’s Choice
First Place
Emily Bowles
The pinch of famine makes us monsters.
— Hilary Mantel
1.
What makes monsters of us?
what
makes us,
makes us
monstrous.
2.
My monstrous
is how I
embody identity
embodity
my oddity,
monstrosity.
3.
I did not recognize the Monster
when he made me—lick—lost ice cream
fell because (he said) my tongue was wrong,
which made me
a monster
the monster
[not] Me
[not] mine
4.
How many women find famine in the feminine
becoming
unbecoming
Monsters, monstrosities?
5.
Mary Toft was
not
that different, self-made monstrous
body brought forth
Dead Bunnies (really), 1
_____________________________
a Medical Miracle
a monstrosity
made her
made of her
when
she committed that unforgivable crime:
made men look foolish
by fooling them.
6.
Me, I am most monstrous when
I make myself
too small—scary,
a sign of Men’s Failure
monstrosity of a body
undesiring.
7.
Famine
makes us
monsters
makes us
monstrous
feminine
makes us
monsters
makes us
monstrous
make up—make up with
a body his body my body any body body body body
eating away at
order |
intelligibility.
8.
Feminine famine
Catholic martyrs, mystics
Woolf with bread roses in the waves
Sexton starving
and now: fatshaming foodpolicing
monstrous battle to live in a body that is not her,
not her battlebody
my battlebody, Grendelish losing.
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1 Mary Toft and her husband developed a scheme during the Eighteenth Century that engendered fleeting fame for her: the couple stuffed her body with rabbits so she could perform the act of giving birth to them. These monstrous births became a subject of profound interest for the medical community.
Judge’s Comments: There were so many submissions to this contest, so many extremely good ones, that I spent hours reading and re-reading each and every one. As a result, I discovered “My Monstrous” long after I’d read or re-read most of the other poems. It was a shocker, both in content, language and organization. I felt the poem had touched on form, feminist poetics, women’s history, linguistics, and fairy tales. I admired its risk-taking as well, and it has inspired me, now a professor emerita, to recommit myself to my own writing.