2025 Bill Holm Winner, Mernine Ameris
the silent winter.
forgetting the sound of your own voice
is easy.
vocal chords were just decoration, like an adam’s apple hung ornament on christmas tree throat.
i always told you that she had a silver tongue!
now here she was
presenting it to Jesus as an offering…
as just another birthday present.
i remember the december morning
when she stopped speaking and started listening. mostly to the morning birds, coughing in the distance, on repeat, like they’d been trying to tell her all along:
she could scream much louder when she was quiet.
the air in her lungs will become easier for her to breathe
the colder it got.
jacket weather during a north virginia winter.
when i woke up and the water waned down roadway drains and released some sort of
heat wave, sunkissed.
the clouds quickly cracked open that day at the height of humidity’s hubris…
climate change’s offering was a cure to seasonal depression.
& when the warm wind came, we indeed laughed at
the embarrassed breeze, so much so that it seemed to lose its wintry edge
on the end of mother earth’s knife.
the frost typically fixed to the bottom row of my plant cart did not show up for work today.
even if this day was some sort of fallacy,
i began to thank god for giving the cold a chance to rest.
this was unfamiliar.
my mouth melted & my teeth thawed & my skin stretched.
this was unfamiliar.
i smiled & said welcome home.
when i woke up and the water waned down roadway drains and released some sort of heat wave
sunkissed…the clouds were quick to crack open that day.
today’s offering was a cure to seasonal depression
@ the height of man’s hubris
the warm wind came,
so we laughed.
cupid’s first pantoum
i would like to think that I am queer
who can say hello and goodbye to people easy,
Including myself, your valentine.
my name is cupid
who can say hello and goodbye to people, easy.
quiet work that makes itself loud—
my name is cupid, after all.
I am lucky for the pride of winter.
quiet work that makes itself loud
with a stab of shame that I don’t remember that enough
I am lucky, I think, if you
just keep thinking about me when I’m gone.
with a stab from the arrows I don’t remember,
I’m known for not thinking about myself.
So just keep thinking about me when I’m gone
and I’ll never stop crying just a little when you have to leave
even when I’m not thinking about myself,
including myself or my queerness or my luck,
I’ll never stop crying when you leave.
I would like to think that I am a queer someone.
Goliath, my uber driver
The story of David and Goliath
At 7:51 pm
Only this time it’s me and a bus stop:
I wonder which one of us is Goliath?
Today is the first brand new day.
It’s the coldest it’s been in a long time
And there’s something about hypothermia
that just puts a roof over some places’ heads.
Oh,
so this,
this is trauma
I wonder which one of us is Goliath.
Today is the first of a brand new day.
And I can’t believe I am up here speaking again,
The silent winter always stays with me.
Silence in the beauty of a time like this
The icing doubling the cake
The defrosting, sometime in May
Where seeds take on a different meaning
My feet, always planted.
I mean, God, it was right in front of me…
8 o’clock…
The bus, racing.
It’s the Father, the Daughter, and the Holy Spirit
Only this time it’s me, God, and a rideshare
Fighting with the GPS
ode to crying in public
somewhere on the highway in the middle of a crowded bus…
solitude has been choking her lately and the year just started.
so much so it’s been messing with her mind, making nightmares of her front door.
it seems like the only release she’s had in these freezing weeks
is wedged in the second to last row.
headphones on tight, eyes glued to the interstate
tears dropping two by two, hot.
at least when they fall, it’s together
this all happens in a cinema of silence.
talking would make the movie worse but hey,
sometimes the best picture is not even good.
that’s the problem with a label
how can you tell when it starts to shift to mean something else?
“goodbye” will sound worse when you mean it
“i miss you” sounds worse when everyone forgets how to ask something to stay
so now you’re crying in public: invisible to all the other passengers & frozen on the highway.
it’s always easier to cry for strangers when you don’t want anyone to see
because sure enough, they won’t.
guaranteed.
cuffing season for harpies like me ಠvಠ
at only 4:55pm, the sun should’ve still been out for as long as we willed it.
this was the first time he had seen my wings while there was no wind.
it was late one winter night and my body, we’ve learned,
had forgotten–again–what to work on and what to let go of,
like those old worksheets we answered in the third grade language arts.
in his dreams, sometimes there is an owl and sometimes there isn’t.
snowstorms were usually for oversleeping in our tower since our hunting was
done and there was plenty found to eat and drink here.
we faithfully swallowed this bitter chill with the crunch of snow on the rocks
to wash down stagnant old energy. so though it was rare, we liked this winter.
yet February’s Owl Moon still came between the slim trees, pooling over tow truck keys.
as each fat worm went down, winter would hold his dusky sweetness no more.
patiently, past the topmost window in the alley with red candles, time unfolded into
the midpoint between winter & spring when warmth finally met my gaze.
sometimes the Owls are not what they seem.
the Jersey bird’s warning song had already begun winding down.
they had spent all their time flying south the way we never did
so maybe this darkness in Virginia is actually all we are to inherit in the end.