2020 Spring Contest Winners: Theme – Anticipation: 3rd Place Winner

The Way

Donna Prinzmetal

The way light from the window

touches the dust and the dust 

hangs there, a promise

or a threat.

The way a hand hovers above a thigh

but doesn’t descend

and doesn’t

and doesn’t

and then does.

The way a candle flickers,

its bright conversation,

sheets tangle like roots

in and out of limbs.

The way breath catches in the throat

like the click of a lock,

a door opens 

or shuts in the glimmer.

The way breath blurs together,

a kind of pastel, how it leaves dust

there on skin.

The way skin holds the memory of fingers

and fingers flutter like feathers

in the dark.

The way veins.

The way muscle.

The way a bed creaks or churns

underneath.

The way breath tributaries

the dark spaces between bodies,

and a mouth opens

with no language.

The way lips and song and startle.

The way pulse.

The way time stutters.

The way the dark.

The way skin knows and doesn’t know.

Poet’s Bio

Donna Prinzmetal is a poet, psychotherapist and teacher. She often uses writing to facilitate restoration and healing in her psychotherapy practice. Her poems have appeared in many magazines including Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, The Comstock Review, The Cincinnati Review and The Journal. Her first book, Snow White, When No One Was Looking, was published with CW Books in May of 2014.

Judge’s Comments – John Brehm

Each of the top three poems for this year’s OPA contest has so much of what I love about poetry. I heard in each a sureness and freshness of voice that felt both original and strangely familiar, and that engaged my full attention from the first line to the last. Each has remarkable, memorable lines: “The way the breath catches in the throat / like the click of a lock.” And each was filled with surprises, large and small, that kept me on my toes and delivered the sense of unexpected delight that make poetry such a joy to read.

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