WINNER OF THE WINTER 2026 POETRY CONTEST
“The quality of the mind that engulfs external reality: echoes it, simulates it, resurrects it, kills it, nonstop…that is very frustrating, for sure.” –Duncan Trussell
In a freezing nursery:
under lowlights
I’m still too fast to be chased down
I’ve become the florist: endlessly knelt
among his thinning flowers
sweet milk: leaking
from the right knee
beset by smoke rising in the distance
my lungs: taste
the air of time
the TV hums:
a New Jersey firefighter was recently lost in the line of duty
&water pools on the floor
the way it always has
besides all the towering terrors
that come into the kitchen
&hunger for me
Pain: is a tiny animal wandering from body to body
***
we still hear love songs on the radio:
our fainthearts cry in bed
the pendulum swings both ways
while my legs rest at the end of a bathtub
faucet sprouting
between soft heels
with the help of steel &candlelight:
feet become a swan
I blow the candle out
other skins are tougher to shed
***
cruelties uttered from tender throats
the pressure of a thumb in the soft hollow
beneath my Adam’s apple
we travel six hours in either direction:
considering the distance sunlight has traveled
to touch skin
I turned 30 the way any man turns:
gently in his sleep: bared-feet
terror-stricken: I laid down
among the tall grass
***
sound fell on deaf ears:
as they came into the room dressed
like doctors friends
shot in the head
as they slept amongst loved ones
in pull-out chairs &hospital beds
soaking an olive headrest
in puddles of thickset claret
I wanna be above it all—to breach
like a fucking whale &roll
my whale eyes
at the never-ending
neurological echo
the iterative wave
of crucifixions
the smell
of a child’s brain
in the air
but I can’t
&I won’t
[1] Ilya said: the deaf don’t believe in silence
something understood in relation to its absence, Phillips followed: I’m writing here in its midst
In ancient Greek the word for “to see” is also the word for “to know.”
Rob Weston is a poet, novelist and essayist with a master’s degree in poetry and fiction from The New School. Born and raised in Seattle, he now resides in Brooklyn, where he can usually be found slightly worn out, consuming pastries and contentedly failing at life in various capacities. His recent work has appeared in The Olive Tree Editorial and is concerned with the exploration of the subconscious, polyphony and ekphrasis.
ELEVENTH HOUR LITERARY 