Nominations

**winners
*finalists

2024

Pushcart Prize
“when asked what it’s like being a poet” by Matthew E. Henry (forthcoming)
On My 47th Birthday by Melissa Joplin Higley
I’m Afraid I Don’t Know How to Love by Christina Linsin
Whales by Kathryn Petruccelli
Keeping Time by Whitney Rio-Ross
Bleed by Luci Shaw

Best of the Net
Omen by Brendan Bense 
The Dissolution of a Marriage by Lindy Biller
Cosmic Slip by Molly Bolton 
Imagining Rembrant, 1633 by Robert Fillman 
Self-Portrait as an Alley by Susan Landgraf 
For Great Aunt Ernie Who Always Knew Wrestling Was Real by Kelly Foster Lundquist 
Things the sun told me while waiting for your forgiveness by Melanie Maggard 
My Sister Comes Home After Graduation by Heather Qin 
On Beauty by Leonora Simonovis 
Inheritance by Michael Sun 

Best New Poets
Half an Ode to Fire by Christopher Todd Anderson
poem on unceded land by Chiara Di Lello

Best Small Fictions
Cosmic Slip by Molly Bolton
103 Pine Ln. by Nicole Callihan
Why No Pictures by Marcene Gandolfo
where the knowing is by Jill Kitchen
Tangled by Dawn Miller

2023

Best Microfiction
We Could Fly to Mars by Abbie Barker
out-of-bounds by Elisabeth Adwin Edwards
I’ll Be Seeing You by Nicole Hart
A Woman Named Shelagh Played Aunt Beru by Kevin Grauke
Things the sun told me while waiting for your forgiveness by Melanie Maggard

Pushcart Prize
Imagining Rembrant, 1633 by Robert Fillman
Supermassive Black Hole and Candidates by Marci Rae Johnson
A Neptune Year by Matthew Murrey
Fifteen Minutes by Curtis Pierce
A Celebration of Lichens by Luci Shaw
I wish Aristotle had been right about birds by Heather Truett

Best Spiritual Literature
At Saint Stephen’s by Emily Patterson
The Swan by Jennifer Pons
Grubb Run Sonnet by Jessica Whipple
I enter the Casa Batlló by Ava Ye/叶曳
Omen by Brendan Bense
Prayer with Dead Mother and Apparent Outward Force on a Rotating Mass by Sally Rosen Kindred

Best of the Net
We Could Fly to Mars by Abbie Barker
Death of Translations by Jessica Berry
poem on unceded land by Chiara Di Lello
A Woman Named Shelagh Played Aunt Beru by Kevin Grauke
After Uri by Sara Henning
Heavy Duty by Elizabeth Taryn Mason
100% Mom by Jane Muschenetz
Ode to Juliet by Dayna Patterson
On Learning That Yale Scientists Restored the Brain Function of 32 Dead Pigs by Angela Sucich
While Crickets Sang in the Tall Grass We Splashed by Brooke White

Best New Poets
On the Morning the Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade by Stefanie Kirby
Call This a Religion by Dhwanee Goyal

Best Small Fictions
Ode to my bald spots by Yanita Georgieva
My Sister and I in the Garden on Daisy Avenue by Mary Grimm
Ode to Juliet by Dayna Patterson
I can’t see Miami by Nicole Tallman
**We don’t say ‘I love you’ in this family by Lucy Zhang

–

2022

Best Microfiction
Cough Medicine Works Best When You Drink It Straight from the Bottle by Leigh Chadwick
In the little free library of my chest by Merie Kirby
Boxcut by Colin Lubner
**What Bones Carry by Janna Miller
Gifts by Remi Recchia
**I’m a Honda Odyssey, I’m a Chrysler Voyager by Eric Scot Tryon

Pushcart Prize
Cow Distortion While Driving Upstate in Tompkins County, New York by H.E. Fisher
Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Katherine Maynard
Koan for Washing Dishes by Mitchell Nobis
Poem in which every remembrance is also a lamentation by Mollie O’Leary
Poem For Mending by Sage
Run the Lights by Jessica L. Walsh

Best Spiritual Literature
Portrait of God as an American Assisted Living Facility by Patricia Caspers
Call This a Religion by Dhwanee Goyal
Salsa Dancing at The Church by Joy Moore
On Learning That Yale Scientists Restored the Brain Function of 32 Dead Pigs by Angela Sucich

Best of the Net
A Rock is a Rock is a Rock by Rebecca Brock
Homophobic Barbie by Dustin Brookshire
Portrait of God as an American Assisted Living Facility by Patricia Caspers
Violets at Last by Eleri Denham
The Discovery of Strength through the Ways of My Son by Robert Fillman
Abuelita by Jose Hernandez Diaz
Making Conversation by Andrea Lynn Koohi
Looking in the Kitchen Window of My Childhood by Suzanne Langlois
Rain Watch by Kristin Van Tassel
Dissections by Nova Wang

Best New Poets
Speed of Sloth by Claire Denson
Mother Tongue by Sarah Yang

Best Small Fictions
I’m Not Good at Love Poems by Auden Eagerton
God Forgot by Diane D. Gillette
Braillet by Jessica Kim
A Lesson in Ceramics by Ra’Niqua Lee
Dissections by Nova Wang

–

2021

Best Microfiction
Violets at Last by Eleri Denham 
How to draw a snowflake by J. Alan Nelson
**Years by Diane Payne
Epistle on Sand by Danielle Rose
Black Friday by Matthew Schultz
Apple Tree by Emma Williams

Pushcart Prize
Where the front yard is by Lauren Camp
The Beach House Offers an Elegy by Sarah Carey
I’m Not Good at Love Poems by Auden Eagerton
In which the body seeks re-admission by Trivarna Hariharan
Family Portrait with Time Travel and Dirty Wings by Sally Rosen Kindred
God the Mother Speaks Fondly of Fish by Dayna Patterson

Best of the Net
My Father Prepares Soup for Christmas & I Remake the Broth by Michael Akuchie
changing the conversation on changing the conversation on changing the by Sarah Cavar
I’m Not Good at Love Poems by Auden Eagerton
Dios Mío by Shemaiah Gonzalez
*South Rim, March by Katie Karnehm-Esh
Family Portrait with Time Travel and Dirty Wings by Sally Rosen Kindred
Poem for Every Girl, or, A Brief History of Sunflowers by Susan L. Leary
What I Don’t Know by Aaron Magloire
And I Still Remember How Your Hands Were So Much Larger Than Mine by Cathy Ulrich
Night, South Alabama, No Regrets by Elinor Ann Walker

Best New Poets
What I Don’t Know by Aaron Magloire
a window overtaken by ivy by Kimberly Ramos

Best Small Fictions
Submerged by gina marie bernard
Exhibit A by Tiffany Hsieh
Florida Girl by Elizabeth Joy Levinson
**Procedures for Moving House in the Sims 4 by Maria S. Picone
a window overtaken by ivy by Kimberly Ramos

–

2020

Best Microfiction
Submerged by gina marie bernard
**Finale by Christopher Linforth
Alternate Universe by Grace Q. Song
Back When I Lived in Eden by Sara Quinn Rivara
**And I Still Remember How Your Hands Were So Much Larger Than Mine by Cathy Ulrich
Night, South Alabama, No Regrets by Elinor Ann Walker

Pushcart Prize
Hello / Goodbye by Rebecca Edgren
Say Breonna Taylor by Ifoghale Eguwe
Dios Mío by Shemaiah Gonzalez
Funerary by Sonja Johanson
What I Don’t Know by Aaron Magloire
Goner by Kami Westhoff

The Orison Anthology
How to Be an Optimist by Michele Bombardier
to do list: grief by Twila Newey
Our Lady of Queer Teen Suicide by Dayna Patterson
Standing Water by Lee Potts
The Window of Joan of Arc Talks to the Window of St. Anne by Kyle Potvin
I’m Crying at the Nail Salon by Gretchen Rockwell

Best of the Net
How to Turn a Loved One into a Skeleton by Katherine Anderson Howell
Submerged by gina marie bernard
(civic duty) by Mary Buchinger
Pond by Catharina Coenen
Two Birds Make a Home in Our Mailbox by Jessica Covil
Perdido Key, Florida, July 2019 by Samantha Duncan
*The World Asks Too Much of Mothers by Marissa Glover
The Sound of Your Cry by Bára Hladík
Clay by Michael Lauchlan
SPF 0 by Elizabeth C. Taylor

Best New Poets
The Street Without Drums by Babo Kamel
A Golden Shovel to the God of Bloodshed by Jermaine Thompson

–

2019

Pushcart Prize
The Sun Doesn’t Know It’s a Star by Kelli Russell Agodon
This is a Full-Rate Telegram by Jennifer Fliss
Shadhavar by A.D. Lauren-Abunassar
Are you sewing, Mom? by Angeline Schellenberg
Portrait of the Artist as the Athabasca Glacier by Hannah Silverstein
Geppetto by Christopher Todd Anderson

The Orison Anthology
Stories I Can’t Tell with My Mouth by Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto
Dead Horses by Ben Groner III
Advice from the Swan by Tresha Faye Haefner
When I Think of the Immortal Jellyfish by Christen Noel Kauffman
Kepler’s Supernova Speaks by Sally Rosen Kindred
Zipline by Susan Blackwell Ramsey

Best of the Net
Cat Lady by Melanie Márquez Adams
Geppetto by Christopher Todd Anderson
I Break the Fold by Julie Brooks Barbour
To the Student Who Called Me Dad by Brian Baumgart
The Hedgehog Eats Peanuts by Aaron Brown
Medusa Swings Her Hammer by Gabrielle Brant Freeman
Without by Lauren Scharhag
A Golden Shovel to the God of Bloodshed by Jermaine Thompson
…And Release by Donna Vorreyer
To the Other Prisoner in the Prisoner’s Dilemma by Vivian Wagner 

Best New Poets
Adage by Natalie E. Illum
Holding the Dying World by Sonja Johanson

–

2018

Pushcart Prize
Whale-Fall Deadsong Heavenly Blues #17 by Christopher Todd Anderson
Murmur by Rhiannon Conley
Jo-rie on the Deck by Ann Howells
Holding the Dying World by Sonja Johanson
In the Grass by Kimberly Priest
Fireside by Jennifer Saunders

Best of the Net
Whale-Fall Deadsong Heavenly Blues #17 by Christopher Todd Anderson
Suburban Orbit by Emily Capettini
Murmurations by Angela Doll Carlson
Murmur by Rhiannon Conley
Some Pig by Ariel Kaplowitz
*Contents by Dayna Patterson
Inauguration by Anya Silver
Before the First Snow by Joannie Stangeland
Enough by Kami Westhoff
Five Days in the Iowan Outback by Chila Woychik

The Orison Anthology
My matter by Trish Hopkinson
Meeting My Son at the Airport by C. Ann Kodra
Cicada by Karen Bjork Kubin
Fireside by Jennifer Saunders
Ceremony of silence by Luci Shaw
**Morning After by Sarah Broussard Weaver

Best New Poets
Enough by Kami Westhoff
Prayer for Charlotte by Allen C. Jones

Bettering American Poetry
The Children Have Stopped Crying by Jo Angela Edwins
Unnecessary Evil by Patricia L. Hamilton
Man Myths by Martin Ott

–

2017

Pushcart Prize
Ethnic Hair by Geoff Anderson
I Want to Write a Poem to Celebrate by Barbara Crooker
The End of the Lines by Erika Dreifus
Nesting Dolls Are Their Own Conspiracy by Amy Strauss Friedman
Unnecessary Evil by Patricia L. Hamilton
Bumping into My Dead Mother at the German Deli by Tammy Robacker