Rattle is proud to announce the winner of the 2023 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award:

Dusty Bryndal
Brooklyn, New York
for
“No Evidence”

 
The 2023 Readers’ Choice Award was selected from among the Rattle Poetry Prize finalists by subscriber vote. Only those with active subscriptions including issue #82 were eligible. In another close race between the top four poems, “No Evidence” earned 18.8% of the votes and the $5,000 award.

Here is what some of those readers had to say about the winner:

The repetition used throughout by the speaker saying she never wrote about these heavy emotions, thoughts, or life altering experiences before really places so much more meaning into this poem. The speaker has been bottling this up for so long and we are allowed into her mind, if only for a while, yet I am left feeling like I know her personally and now carry the weight of her loss. This poem didn’t feel like the speaker getting diagnosed with cancer was the center of the poem. The takeaway for me was that life goes on even after losing someone you can’t imagine living without and how awful it can be to be the one that gets to live.
—Cassandra Manzolillo

The struggle is so evident in this poem, the way she braids the two huge struggles in her life together and apart, her use of lineation, stanza breaks, and white space to shape her experiences in this poem. The final couplet summing it all up!
—Dell Lemmon

Her poem was beautiful. It was a brilliant look into the dual experiences of grief and having cancer. Everyone’s worst nightmares—losing a child and having cancer—happened to her all at once, and we can really feel the pain.
—Tatiana Raudales

The journey of the poem is poignant. You understand the double loss this woman underwent and the strength she showed in the face of adversity. The emotions are felt clearly by the reader and the story of the poet is heartfelt. As a survivor of a life-threatening illness, I found the poem to be deeply relatable.
—Wendy Van Camp

Dusty’s poem resonated with me. I recently moved back to my home province to help my elderly newly-widowed mother. She suffered a cardiac event a few months ago and it has been a revolving door of doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, lab tests, ecgs, pet scans, and angiograms. What struck me most about this poem is how Dusty sprinkles it with descriptions about the agony of waiting, waiting, and waiting some more for results, consultations, appointments, and the inevitable massive event that may make all the waiting moot. How she persisted with treatment in the face of the worst experience a parent can endure, made my heart ache but also made me dig my heels in with her to carry on—like the way I used to press on the non-existent brake pedal on the passenger side of the car while teaching my son to drive. I will think of this poem during the next 7 weeks of appointments with my Mom.
—Angelle McDougall

Yesterday, I had my annual mammogram. Within an hour of returning home, I received an email with the results: no cancer detected. Also, I have a son. His life is upside down and his heart has been broken by his wife going off the rails after 20 years and three beautiful children, but he is alive. For that I am so thankful. I do not think Dusty’s heart will be much mended by her poem winning, but I cannot not vote for her poem. She writes masterfully, puts her reader right there beside her heart. And winning may give her a nanosecond of joy. Her grieving heart deserves that and so much more.
—Maggie Westvold

Because her kid is fucking dead,
And it hurt like it was mine.
—Breonne Stiglitz

Read “No Evidence” online right now. To read all of the finalist poems, pick up a copy of Rattle #82, or read them one at a time this month as daily poems at Rattle.com.

Dusty Bryndal was the winner, but this year’s voters as divided as ever, and all of the finalists had their own enthusiastic supporters. Every year, it’s an interesting and informative experience reading the commentary. To provide a sense of that, here is a small sample of what our subscribers said about the other finalists:
 

On River Adams’ “A Lesson in Meetaphor”:

I don’t have much patience with writing about writing or poetry about poetry. This poem is an exception. That might be because all language is metaphor, standing in for the thing itself, so this exploration is more foundational. While exploring what does and doesn’t work as a metaphor, it bent my mind a little, then, then quietly left the room, taking my breath with it.
—Karen Berry

A poet who understands that form and syntax strengthen poetry. River Adams’ use of couplets and alternating short and long sentences adds nuance and energy not only to her strong opening metaphor, but to the whole idea of the impact metaphorical imagery has on so many subjects. Her form compliments and impacts the very imagery she so successfully evokes.
—Yvonne Logan

On Lisa Bass’s “Makeup”:

Such a tender, detailed poem I love the way it builds and builds. I have a granddaughter who went through that phase; now the focus is on piercings and nail gels. Poem really conveys both the insecurity of the girl, the shock of the shock of the mom and sister.
—Linda Lancione

I loved how tension-filled the poem is throughout, and your immediate connection not only to the mother, but the daughter as well. I love that we don’t need to know why the daughter has been in her room. The imagery of a young woman hiding behind makeup and the comparison to a space suit needed for survival is stunning. I found myself returning to it several times.
—Tammy Greenwood

On Roberta Beary’s “Sonnet #1: My Way”:

Any poem that rhymes “steamy hot” and “Charlotte” does it for me!
—Jim Feeney

There is so much going on in this poem! The tension of living with a troubled teen and the sense of being afraid to “jinx it” is captured perfectly. The long lines and absence of end punctuation—until the literal end of the poem—support the tone of tension and caution. Then, to use the symbolism of the makeup and dare to add the astronaut metaphor is just plain powerful. Bravo.
—Nancy Nott

On Isabella DeSendi’s “Elegy for Tío Lazaro”:

She turned a man’s whole life into a piece of art—and she impactfully highlighted the larger story of the inequity and injustice toward immigrants in this system who have struggled their whole lives to keep up. I especially love the way she writes about how he could fix broken things (it’s why god gave us hands) and her beautiful use of our constellations of deaths. Finally, it’s the kind of poem that offers up more gifts every time we read it.
—Valentina Gnup

As always, I can find reasons to choose each of the poems, but after several re-readings, I’m voting for “Elegy for Tio Lazaro.” I think it’s a wonderful example of making the personal universal; most of us have suffered (even if not so drastically) at the cold hands of bureaucracy, and the comment offered here on the shameful indifference to the undocumented is all the more powerful for not being polemical. The portrait of the uncle is tender without sentimentality and angry without self-pity. I also admire the clarity of the language and power of the images—”the animal of his thin, brown body lassoed // to an oxygen tank” and “The tip of the letter, still sticking out // of my mom’s black purse like a cigarette / already flickering gone.” The last one is especially good, returning readers as it does to the cigarettes smoked on the sly at the beginning.
—Lynne Knight

On Diana Goetsch’s “Motel Surrender”:

It’s the one that’s stayed freshest in my mind this winter, that juxtaposition between the coldest season and the inevitability of burning.
—Thomas Mixon

I love the music of that poem so much—the rhyme and alliteration, the humor and the Shakespearean finality of the final line.
—Katy Stanton

On Meredith Mason’s “Use Your Words”:

I finally settled on “Use Your Words,” precisely because of the sensitivity and restraint with which the poet and mother chose the casual but powerful words spoken by her son, herself, and any parent and child facing unwanted separation. Congratulations to Meredith Mason on this subtle moment so finely, gracefully caught in unassuming language!
—Rhina P. Espaillat

This was a tough call as I loved all these poems—however, this one cut me to the core. As a divorced mom of two, I feel the “long-gone” in this poem acutely. The sonnet form is a perfect reflection of the speaker’s attempt to rationalize and order her and her son’s emotions/situation while lending a sing-song quality to the poem. The slight breakdown of structure and punctuation that occurs in stanza 3 builds to the volta—the maple’s hands are empty, just like the mother’s. The closing couplet is the speaker’s last attempt to reconcile her feelings while acknowledging that this is a distance that she will never fully escape or overcome. I want to weep when I read this, but I feel less alone as a result of this meditation. Bravo!
—Sara Smith

On Amy Miller’s “Umbrella”:

It says more in fewer words, creates a vivid metaphor, uses dialog, risks sentimentality by employing a sleeping baby and proves that an honest use of language can turn the most mundane, borderline cliche moment into something bigger than itself.
—Rasma Haidri

My vote for the 2024 Readers’ Choice Award goes to Amy Miller’s deceptively simple “Umbrella.” There is a lot of trauma and injustice going on in the world right now and profound poems written about them, but I found that this poem gifted me a much-needed rest. It is almost as if the poem itself served as an umbrella for the readers, shielding them “raindrops exploding.” The poems that get published today seldom focus on beauty and innocence, preference going to the poems that shout or emote. I like the quietness of this poem, the whispered observation of such mundane things as the “little double Oks” of a child’s hands. The poem causes me to pause and reflect. Even when I walk away from this poem, I think about it because the imagery and language are simple but beautifully told.
—Andre Le Mont Wilson

On Jacob K. Robinson’s “The Pool”:

I am not a boy, I am not from Texas, and I don’t like to swim, but this poem reaches me in an emotional place of aching and haunting familiarity. I chose this poem from the place where it lingered and stirred up waves of feelings, the place where the best poems land in me when they fall from out of the blue. Like this one. Thank you.
—Michelle Ballou

There is an individual voice present: the poem sounds like no other; and the feel for reality is different from any other poem I’ve read. The imagery is fresh and striking. The line lengths and line breaks support the poem’s meaning beautifully. I like the way the poem becomes far-reaching in its implications during the second half, and that speaks to the attention to structure Robinson shows. The way the poem’s ending words echo the beginning demonstrates impressive organization. Also, the ending of the poem is moving, in an understated way, in keeping with the poem’s voice. It also highlights the work’s psychological and philosophical depth.
—Austin Alexis

On Tim Seibles’ “Ants”:

Seibles has written the best ant poem since Robert Frost’s “Departmental,” and like Frost’s wry exploration of human mortality through the lens of the family Formidicae, Seibles’s poem explores the intricate colonies of bittersweet desire that constitute our life-journeys. I love this poem, and how it keeps on walking through me, long after I’ve put it down.
—Dante Di Stefano

The poem starts with something small, an ant, and takes us on a big journey although it’s only a walk down a street in the speaker’s memory, a street that’s no longer familiar, and nothing is familiar anymore, “even my own country.” Like the ant, what can we do but keep walking. That is deep and true in these difficult times. I love the simile, “the city like a black leather jacket.” I love the ant on the dashboard and then the ant returns later on in the poem, this time on the basketball court where the speaker wishes he could believe “what that ant believed with those fancy sneaks flashing all around.” The language is clear and magical. All the turns in the poem bring a surprise. The voice is real. I want to follow wherever it takes me. It took me to a real place of feeling, and that feeling is universal.
—Susan Browne