{"id":39588,"date":"2025-07-17T18:44:55","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T01:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=39588"},"modified":"2026-04-13T19:23:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T02:23:18","slug":"winner-of-the-willow-springs-surrealist-poetry-prize-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/winner-of-the-willow-springs-surrealist-poetry-prize-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Winner of the 2025 Willow Springs Surrealist Poetry Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2025 Surrealist Prize Finalists<\/h1>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"Willow<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in\u00a0<\/strong>Willow Springs 97
See<\/strong> Author Profile<\/a>
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Winner<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

“Stranger Fruits Grow Here” by Wasima Khan<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The ceiling in their old house
had a crack shaped like a horse.
My father said it only galloped
when someone lied.
By the time I was ten,
the horse was running.

My mother boiled silence
in a silver pot every night.
It smelled like burnt lavender
and the word maybe.<\/em>

She stirred it with a wooden spoon
that once belonged to her mother,
who disappeared
in the middle of\u2014

They kept a room in the house
for feelings that never learned English.
Once, I opened the door.

Inside:
a coat made of glass,
a calendar with no days,
a mirror that only showed me as a bird.

They handed me sweaters
and cut fruit in strange shapes.
Once, my father carved a pear
into the face of a sleeping child.
I didn\u2019t know what to do with it,
so I buried it in the yard.

Years later, a tree grew,
bore fruit shaped like ears.
When the wind blew,
they whispered all the things
my parents never said.

I picked one.
Held it to my own ear.
It wept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Wasima Khan<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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Finalists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Megan Maughan<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

“they thought I had a tumor but turns out I’m just made of a thousand tiny hearts”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Bates<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

“Mesquite<\/strong>“<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2025 Surrealist Prize Finalists<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5678,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-issue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5678"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39589,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39588\/revisions\/39589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}