Honors in Creative Writing
Faricy Award for Poetry
The strip mall parking lot,
an insalubrious afterdark,
is so sepulchral
that even flicking on headlights construes
an act of disinterance.
City salt smears and muffs up
its blacktop from the white prints of tire tread;
Look from above, with God’s eye view,
at these abstract slush blots
of pop psychology––
Tell me Boris, what do you see?
The angles of Super China Buffet, IHOP,
Glow-in-the-Dark Mini Golf and its Putt-Putt Arcade;
Tacky first dates
frilly and memorable as
a bra you rush off…
Oh these strip
malls and their swooping overhangs,
golden church heads looming gibbous beyond,
pierogi-shaped architecture
as seen from the
smoke-break vantage;
Hold a lighter to your ear
and hear the hiss of gas
of a flame that can––
And that, my dear Boris, is what it feels like…