Roberto Ascalon
Seattle, WA
for
“The Fire This Time”

Charles Bukowski once said, “Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” It’s from this place of desperate resignation that “The Fire This Time” seems to be born, a poem not delivered as from a speaker to an audience, but howled into the wind. Some poems present us with life wrapped up in a tidy package and we come away feeling good about the world and our place in it; some poems wage war against our comfortable delusions about reality, and we come away with a few cracks in our foundation, which is, as Leonard Cohen sang, “how the light gets in.” With blazing language and a pounding rhythm, “The Fire This Time” poses hard questions—and leaves us longing for answers. We’re proud to announce it as winner of the 2013 Rattle Poetry Prize.

Finalists:

“A Poem for Women Who Don’t Want Children”
Chanel Brenner
Santa Monica, CA

“My Mother Told Us Not to Have Children”
***Readers’ Choice Award Winner***
Rebecca Gayle Howell
Lubbock, TX

“Baby Love”
Courtney Kampa
New York, NY

“What He Must Have Seen”
Stephen Kampa
Daytona Beach, FL

“Man on Mad Anthony”
Bea Opengart
Cincinatti, OH

“Laundry List”
Michelle Ornat
Elma, NY

“Man on the Floor”
Jack Powers
Fairfield, CT

“Basic Standards Test”
Danez Smith
St. Paul, MN

“Who Breathed in Binders”
Patricia Smith
Howell, NJ

“Of You”
Wendy Videlock
Grand Junction, CO