Hey ladies! The submission period for the 2011 Perugia Press Prize for a first or second book of poetry by a woman is now open. Send between 48 and 72 pages of poetry for your chance to win $1000 and publication.

Click here for complete details.

Each Crumbling House by Melody S. Gee was the 2010 recipient. Read an excerpt from the winning book below. Click here to purchase .


Migration

After the rain, trees burn with monarchs,
come this winter on dust-and-paper bodies.
Some of the dead cling to trash on the road,

frames of wings like frames of broken windows.
You say you never saw anything like them
in China, though you cannot say for sure.

As a girl, you leashed crickets with ox hairs
and baited bees with sweet tomato flesh.
But nothing like this, you say, like this orange.

This monarch generation lives three times
longer than its parents, than it would without
a migration to complete. They are given

time to break their bodies over mountains
and heave themselves onto warm trees
so they all might survive. Are you wondering

how much more time you have been given
to learn a language and forget a language, to break
your body over an ocean for this pale

redwood dusk and this daughter?
I know you were not drawn here to save
yourself. I cannot tell you that I have

nothing to save, nothing that waits for me
to be drawn, nothing that says, you must,
you must break your wings for this.