Winner

“Upon Reading Šalamun’s Opera Buffa, The Trees Outside My Window Reel and Rhumba” by Ronda Piszk Broatch

Tomaž tells me, I’m wrapped in your stole! I tell him
your exclamation points drop like wind-snapped limbs.

A moon and a pillow described grief, similarly.
The wind grew fifty-some miles per hour, whistlingly.

Tomaž’s translator says (a) poem is all flung-ness,
spun-ness, a value-neutral sublimation of all rec-

ordered matter into seraphic process. Dust encrusts
the red porcelain roses atop my ancestor’s ring box.

Porcelain, Paul Celan. Tomaž’s translator likens
the man to an amalgam of petuntse and kaolin.

Something’s left confused/incomplete/out in the rain.
Who comes back? Who gives in?

I ask Tomaž: what would you pick up, a bomb
or a dandelion? He prefers to sit between his dead.

The translator mourns the poet’s passing, saying
Hell on earth would be better served by opera seria.