Mahaila Smith for the poem “Offerings to Save the World”!
Arc’s Coordinating Editor Manahil Bandukwala and the Arc Poetry Magazine Board also selected an honourable mention:
Offerings to Save the World
After Christi Belcourt
I stand on the mountains of strawberry fields
that lace my muscles with veins
of red and gold water and sun and earth.
I stand at the edge of an oceanic ravine.
Even at the lowest depths,
marine animals find a reason to put the lights on.
I swim to the sun-shaped hole in outer-space
and peer over the edge at the mirrored universe.
The parallel timeline attracts prayers and ghosts.
I let my makeup compact idolize through the black window.
I let my weathervane heart navigate.
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Mahaila Smith (they/she/he) is the co-editor for the speculative magazine, The Sprawl Mag. They are a writer from the traditional unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe territory of Ottawa, Ontario. Their debut chapbook was published by Anstruther Press in 2020.
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