Spring Poetry Contest Winners
Congrats to our Spring Contest Winner, Nona Lea and Runners-up: Lauren Cussell and Rob Kelleher. Read all three poems right here!
Magnolias
by Nona Lea
I was brought into the land of giants spidering across the bayou,
cicadas humming their harmonicas, moss creeping on tombstones, and streets
flooding with embalming fluid.
I was brought into the world on a hot, December day through a prayer,
“Lord, please grant me a little girl with bright red hair, and I’ll name her
the prettiest name I had ever heard, Nona Lea.”
Nona Lea, the great-grandmother I know from a painting of magnolias
blooming in the life cycle of maiden, mother, crone: a bud about to twist
open its petals, a pregnant bloom dancing ballgowned, falling into post-
abscission, curling inwards as babies leave the nest and the flower asks,
what do I do next?
Nona Lea, who married into a bloodline that came to these lands hunting
for greener pastures, to shapeshift grasses into cold hard cash,
by means of sweat and by means of blood, praying to god,
but praying louder to the almighty dollar.
Nona Lea who watched her heritage be buried under a magnolia tree
by a woman in a sundress, wearing long gloves stretching to her elbows,
a big southern lady hat shading her face and shoulders, and
papers hungry for a percentage of blood, moaning in an esoteric tongue.
Nona L-E-A, who was supposed to have been Nona L-E-E, if the doctor
didn’t take creative liberties, and while this may not be a legally binding
document, we can correct that mistake today and call you by your
mother-given name, Nona Lee.
Nona Lee, do you know what your name means?
I’ve searched our meaning in as many languages that’ll take it to find
a secret meaning, a sort of connection, a hidden heritage, to you.
You see, all my life, people have been asking what’s your real name
because they think Nona must be a nickname for something like
Winona or Romona, since the name is so alien to their ears it sounds
like the static mutterings of a scratched record and they are certain
the lyrics they heard are wrong. So they call me names they think
my name should be—Nina, Mona, Rona, Nicki, Julee, Barbara, Jannie.
Those who recognize my name tell me in Italian, Nona means grandmother,
and they ask if my parents purposefully called me an old lady.
Though, when actually translated, English adds an extra “n”
making the name Nonna matching with the pattern of Momma. And when
I inform them of this their all-knowing grins tilt down, and they
still struggled to swallow my name.
But Nona isn’t an unfinished name,
it is not misheard,
it is not wrong.
She find her roots in ancient Rome, as the name given to a ninth daughter
because her name is synonymous with the number nine, but she is not just
a number.
Nona is the fate who spins the thread of life, and as pregnancy
is nine months, as the babe spins in the womb from a thread connected
to its mother, the number and the goddess become intertwined.
While it’s not clear which came first, the goddess, or the prefix,
and while most baby name blogs suggested the number was paired
with the goddess, no Roman in their right mind would ever name a
number before naming a goddess.
Therefore, all Nonas are not by definition numbers,
but goddesses.
Nona Lee, did you know you shared your name with a goddess?
Did you also know that Lee means clearing or meadow or grasslands?
So when you combine the meanings of your first and middle name, it becomes:
the goddess of the flowering grasslands who spins life from her spindle.
Isn’t that just beautiful for someone who loved to garden?
I was told you’d always wear this big sunhat, gloves reaching to your
elbows, and you’d toil flowers and vegetables, wearing a sleeved dress
coming down to your ankles, even when the sun could sizzle butter in
a cast iron pan, even when the humidity pearled on your cheeks, you’d wear
that whole outfit, because if the sun got a hold of your skin, it would turn
brown-red and back then, and still today, the only skin type it was safe to be
matched with was egg whites.
While L-E-E means grasslands, my name, L-E-A means delicate
or weary and I’m very weary of its masculine variation because even
though my eyes are just like your and have resisted colonization, my
skin is right now tanned and still white as my damn bones.
See, L-E-E is a name associated with the confederacy, and
I’m sure you can find a statue of him somewhere down here
in the boot state, I don’t want a name associated with a legacy
of slavery that people with American and confederate flags call
“just a dispute of state’s rights” and “has nothing to do with
slavery.” And while your name would mean a goddess who created
life, mine if spelled L-E-E not L-E-A would imply the opposite.
But I’m rather fond of the meaning of my name as is now:
the weary goddess who spins life from her spindle,
because I am so fucking tired of people asking where my name comes from.
I still don’t know why your mother named you Nona Lee, and I still
don’t know why, even though you painted other flowers—watercolor
lilies in cracked ceramic pots—you painted magnolias most beautifully.
When my mother wasn’t looking, I often traced the grooves of the strokes,
following the vanilla curves of the blooming petals, the waxy, large leaves,
staring at the small signature at the bottom of the frame with a personality
quieter than my own.
Maybe you painted them so beautifully because giant flowers
blooming from a land of tombstones, mosquitoes, and slick,
stagnant mud with startling white petals standing in sheer defiance
of the miasma are magical. Maybe, like the magnolias, you also
wanted to be remembered as beautiful.
To me, your name is beautiful.
Rest in peace, Nona Lee.
For the Sake of the Outfit
by Lauren Cussell
I don’t expect you
to understand my blueprint
Yellow shoes to match
the yellow soda can in my hand
All for the sake of the outfit
Now,
I want a golden arm around me at all times
Now,
I don’t want bronze
Or even silver,
Now,
I want the arm of the one
who makes everything make sense
But I don’t expect you
to be a penny
or even a dime,
I don’t expect you
to make cents of this
I don’t expect you to understand
that I need a miracle tonight
So what if I’m in the middle
of my Charles Bukowski era?
So what if laying with the rats feels just right?
And you should do what you want,
just make sure to look at the moon tonight
I don’t expect you to get it
The blueprint, the moon-print
I don’t expect you to understand it
to dissect it
The way you say my name
like it’s being said for the first time;
what’s the point of it?
The moon looks like you tonight
lovely, yet shapeless
Did you mean it when you said “I love you?”
Or was it all for the sake of the outfit?
