Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is the author of numerous poetry collections, including But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise, chosen by Claudia Rankine as winner of the 2010 Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Award; Personal Science; and Travesty Generator (Noemi Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Poetry Society of America Anna Rabinowitz Prize for interdisciplinary work. First Place winner in Narrative’s Eight Annual Poetry Contest, Bertram teaches in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

Photograph by Dennison Bertram.


SECOND PLACE WINNER


I Was a Barking Dog

by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

I was a thing once. A coyote

routing the timber


at the river’s edge.


Then, the river’s edge.


January’s frigid waistcoat


slinging my belly


low over the fields.
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