SECOND RUNNER-UP: "AUGUST GHAZAL" BY RACHEL MARIE PATTERSON "Rachel Patterson's ghazal is able to take the speed implied by the image ('Your beat-up Maxima climbs faster and faster. I I You paid for me at restaurants, left your fingerprints I on my elbow. When I laughed and ran ahead, you ran faster') and slow it with the repetition of that very word, 'fast' -we are given a slow motion view here inside of larger speed, we are looking 'out of windows,' 'off balconies,' 'on curbsides,' and we are 'in the field' and 'the spiders below us' also move, as does 'blood' inside us. To achieve so much in a short lyric is a beautiful thing."
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ILYA KAMINSKY