Danielle Blau, First Place winner of the 2014 Narrative 30 Below Contest, is the author of the chapbook mere eye, selected for the 2012 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Award and the book Rhyme and Reason: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Art of Living the Big Questions (Norton, 2018). A graduate of Brown University with a degree in philosophy and of New York University with an MFA in poetry, Blau teaches at Hunter College in New York.


FIRST PLACE WINNER


Arpeggio Progression in Missing Key and Other Poems

by Danielle Blau


Arpeggio Progression in Missing Key


1

& look we’re on a raft
in the sun on a raft really getting
somewhere now     I got kelp
on my leg
on the swim over

2

do you asks pretty
sue know what


I love what pretty
please tell us


3

leeches on my shin
might have been


barnacles maybe the point is


that it’s gone now
or it might have been algae


4

one two three
here we


are and before we know
it we are still here look


in the sun the clanging
sun listen


it’s counting


5

do you asks pretty


sue know what


I love pretty


please tell us tell us


what we give up


6

I knew


a boy once


I liked the


funny way


that he


said satan
People on couch
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