2nd Place – Flash 405, August 2020: “Invented Language”
Poetry
someone ruined it. someone said something words towards ruining what was said by someone. beside couples life beside limits moves something toward. infinitely someone holds place for someone. one letter finally something eradicates something without conclusion without end without bright brightly sunny sun light lightly light light. the fiction of actual disappearance. one letter displaced one letter pressed one letting again into something else into someone else towards the body of regard. someone walking towards ruining.
Judge’s Comments:
the big eclipse is stunning because of how it gestures towards the ways in which it can be very difficult, or impossible, to ever tell a loved one exactly what one means.
Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and graduated from Florida Atlantic University’s MFA program in Creative Writing. She teaches Archetypal Psychology and American Literature at AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Hollywood, California. She was the 2017 Nonfiction Award Winner for Red Hen Press, as well as the AWP Intro Journals Project Award Nominee in 2015. Her work has been featured in The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Hobart, Cosmonauts Avenue, Fiction Southeast, and more. Her first collection of essays entitled The Perpetual Motion Machine is out now with Red Hen Press, and her debut novel The Brittanys will be published with Vintage in 2021.
Photo credit: Abed Ismail