Horizon | Winner | The Canto Poetry Prize

Simple

Hannah Keeton Hughson

Fall is here yellowing yards. He died the whole evening, for really two evenings, for really two years almost to the day, and every day of those two years I thought of him dying, of who had committed the betrayal, us or God or years ago the boy beloved, a sunshine sailor’s mouth and careless with the BB gun. Two years ago he was older. Unpretentious, brilliant. October sun. The same that burns through fog over Leitrim’s fields, yellowing too the hill we climbed and drank the water where it slipped down clean from the mosses, the water I helped him drink while I remembered his mother and watching a life wane, it is never simple. The life, the waning, (watching death unfold over the mouth when just before there had been words, shushing and gummy on their way out, but a sound of want) that it leaves through the window so the window stays open.

About the poet

Hannah Keeton Hughson is a writer from Richmond, Virginia. Her work explores ceremony and sunburns. Her poetry can be found in The Amphibian, Corvus Review, and others.

Our winner

‘Simple’ is the winner of the Horizon-themed Canto Poetry Prize. Hannah Keeton Hughson builds the poem from vivid, snapshot-like images that hold time and memory together in the frame. The repetitions and hesitations evoke a mind still equivocating, still turning the loss over. The poem reads like a private act of thought, caught mid-motion.

Shortlisted poems
At the western edge of Europe — Gwyneth Box
fruit tones — Mary Zhu
Georgia and Goodie’s Roadtrip Extravaganza — Cherry Cheesman
huge concentrations of matter packed into tiny spaces — Bethany Hart
Second Bloom — Julie Shulman
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