2013 Ekphrasis Prize

Editors Laverne and Carol Frith announce in the latest issue of Ekphrasis that the winner of the 2013 Ekphrasis Prize is Susanna Rich of Blairstown, NJ for “Shoes Along the Danube Promenade.” Here are the first few stanzas:

Budapest, 2005, sixty years
past Hitler’s blitzkriegs, death camps,
and the Hungarian Arrow Cross Militia

lining up and roping together Jews
to face the red river that received them
as they were shot (the body tipping forward,

the falling away from tight eyes).
Sixty pairs of cast iron shoes are anchored
into the concrete embankment . . .