Ully Hirsch/Robert F. Nettleton Poetry Prize Runner-Up

The dead in Braddock are piled on streets;
the smell sticks to your clothes.

In pleasant places the dying are ripened grapes –
dried and put in boxes.

Limbs bent from work are the new barked branches;
Do they trim the ones that block the telephone wires?

We don’t make outward calls, anymore.
We know it’s useless.