Jack Bordnick

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Bordnick’s interest are to create artistic, meaningful works of art that can be enjoyed by all peoples and cultures.
Being a designer and sculptor, has allowed himto share my professional experiences, in a beneficial way for both business and community projects of this nature. He has been a successful designer and have over twenty years experience in design, fabrication and installation of numerous and diverse projects of this nature. As an Industrial design/Sculptor graduate of Pratt Institute in New York, where he had his own professional design business and been a design director for numerous companies and local government projects. They included a major children's
museum, for the city of New York and Board of Education, involved in all aspects of the marketing, design and installation.

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Samantha Moya

A Moment's Notice

6:14am, in the aftermath of the nor'easter —

a solitary wander before the city rustles,

a side effect of nowhere to-be and no-one to call on,

snow's dampening of sound its own music to me

I escape the wind chill under a bus station platform and

icicles, perilous above, snowstorm's medieval swords,

I think about it splitting my head open on this sidewalk,

the anatomy of it, the skull fragments,

scattered brain matter, a beautiful crimson

stains this pristine white blanket but also

the tarnished gray snow that has soaked in

car exhaust, dirt, gravel, boots' grime,

and humanity's other wretched sins,

a thankless sponge, my open head atop it

long fascinated by any life's last moments,

a final firing of neurons, I would like to think that

this isn't weakness, or worse, sadness,

I want to believe that a beautiful, idealized version

of my life would reveal itself to me, a movie projected

on the white clouds I stare up into, because

I often wondered what the years would look like to me

if it was lensed beautifully, if we applied a filter to it,

if the director knew when to call cut,

if people knew exactly what to say and when,

if the heavy pauses took on narrative weight,

if I could look around me and only see pink sunsets

I hope my eyes know to close when I die,

I imagine this death would be as silent as the air

when the snow was falling, I would simply love to be

found somewhere, peaceful, I would love to be found

in such a state that people are moved,

more than they are fearful of my mangled face,

maybe by an elderly woman trying to catch a bus, or

a young daydreaming man who stumbles on my limbs, oh yes,

I would love to be found

I would simply love to be found.

Thursday Afternoon

You’re making a left turn,

and I, in all my hazy contentedness,

smile at the way you tap your finger

on the steering wheel to the beat of the music 

You sigh heavily at the oncoming traffic,

your impatience endearing

Sun peaks between cumulus clouds,

you just keep driving and driving and tapping and driving

I think about exchange rates of experience,

how bodies hurl through time and space, 

the inertia of relationships and love and regrets,

how tied we are to our anxieties and fears

And yet, we know how to set them aside for a few hours at a time,

When you glance over at me, I give you a grin,

this found language we have that keeps us in sync

You change the music,

something a little bit more upbeat,

a taste of the sun that is coming out,

we talk about something banal, 

but it still feels weighted between us

I pick at a stain on my jeans,

you spray the windshield fluid to clean off the grim,

I contemplate that even when this car stops moving,

we never do.

King Cake

You, a fève, holy in my mouth, saliva-soaked, peculiar.

Under my tongue, we return to one another, spellbound

drifters, when I swallow you whole. I tell myself that I

ingested the watermelon seed and you will grow plentifully

inside my belly. You will grow and grow and grow.

Until I cut you out of me. A flagrant act, unearthing

myself from myself. I was only ever interested in a kind

of suicide by surrender. There isn't anything worth

living for that you wouldn't cut yourself open to keep. And

even then you'll find yourself asking: who am I to you.

Who are you to me. Strangers on a silver anniversary.

And I am hazy on the details of the beginnings. My comings

and goings. I cannot predict what this future will hold.

We are phantoms in a shoebox. Vessels more than we are

people. Ideas more than we are human beings. A plague

traveling across the plains. We will still sneak glances to get

our nourishment. Blood pools from reopened stitches, wounds

stretched out like smiles. Stigmata for bugs, quite unamused.

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Samantha Moya is a data specialist and writer. She currently resides in Denver, Colorado with her husband and two dogs. She can be found at Twitter/X and Instagram @samanthalmoya.

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The Charles Simic Prize 2024

We created the Charles Simic Prize to honor our friend, teacher, and mentor after his death in early 2023.

This year we received 371 submissions from around the world. Our editors had the extremely challenging task of narrowing submissions down to 25 to pass along to Dana Levin, who selected the winner.

Here's what Dana had to say about the process and why she chose this year's winner:

I went on the hunt for a poem that carried some of the spirit of Charlie’s work: vivid images; a touch of the surreal; a conversational approach to diction and tone; a bit of dark humor, or irony, or the absurd—cut with a shiver of disturbance. Ultimately, I hoped for a jolt of surprise: a sudden flick of a switch in my work-a-day mind. The poem “Witness Statement” by Oz Hardwick has these qualities in spades. I followed the plot turns and the speaker’s confusions with real curiosity, and loved how the poem both surprised me and intensified its emotional stakes as it unfurled towards its end.

Thanks to the finalists for the tonic of vivid reading, and to Bill Schulz for the opportunity to encounter them. A bow to Tina Cane, Janine Certo, Holly Iglesias, and Erica Reid for submitting poems I read over and over. 

Congratulations to Oz Hardwick, the recipient of this year's $1,000 prize and to Janine Certo, who received this year's Editor's Choice Prize, a signed first-edition of Charlie's Pulitzer Prize winning book, The World Doesn't End.

We're pleased to present the work of the 25 finalists in the following pages. Our thanks to all who participated in this year's contest.

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