We’re pleased to announce the terrific judges lined up for our 2010 contests:

*The A. David Schwartz Fiction Prize: Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh

*The Beau Boudreaux Poetry Prize: Quraysh Ali Lansana, author of They Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems and Southside Rain

*The David B. Saunders Prize for Creative Nonfiction: Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation and Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (forthcoming Feb. 2011).

Each contest features a prize of $1,000 and publication, with a postmark deadline of December 31, 2010. You could probably use the money–why not check out the details?

The following is a poetry excerpt from issue 33.1 (Spring 2009) of the cream city review. It appears on page 43.

THE LOLA DADS.
Pablo Tanguay

They stay at home. They carve
from plastic foam the os and as and glue
them to the ls the Lolas make the Lola
Moms carve before they leave for work. They paint
the Lolas pink, and ask the Lolas where
the Lolas want their Lolas hung. The Lolas
traipse about the house, and point to barren,
Lola-less space. They hang the Lolas there.
And then they stand a few feet back, and then
adjust the Lolas. And then, and only then
(because they are—the Lola Dads—less
than optimistic), they check the time. It’s only
1:01. The Lolas pine for more
Lolas. They’re asking Daddy, is there time?

The following is a poetry excerpt from issue 33.1 (Spring 2009) of the cream city review. It appears on pages 150-1.

PISTOLERA RECOLLECTIONS
Luke Daly

After seeing a photo of me painting
a house I’ve never seen robin’s egg blue,

I aim to learn how memories persist or
perish so I ask the moon.

White moon utters its private,
dead-thing language and hangs

in blinking, beeping star fields
from a crumbling ribcage and harpsichord veins.

I’m planted in waiting for a return transmission.

Ten million lightyears away in the Sombrero Galaxy
a lunar translation has bloomed

but the translator speaks only in flowers
and the flowers refuse to speak—

There’s the bucket of yellow photos
of my aunts and of my cowboy boots

and of my aunts in yellow cowboy boots.

They’re drinking alligator wine.
They’re honking like men at football matches.

Shall I trust these photos too? I can almost
pluck each one; they float here in the waiting

room. But like a stone on my tongue
I cannot photosynthesize by toothlight.

I am part of this blind chromatic ritual
of light me up with beet dye,

light my chest for everyone to see.