El Andar Award for Literary Excellence

The El Andar Prize for Literary Excellence II

THE PAULA AWARD: first place

The Wedding Coat

by Brandi LaDonna

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Brandi LaDonna concluded her scholastic career at the University of Central Oklahoma.

She has recently joined the U.S. Navy where she hopes to major in English. ÒA strange place for an creative studies major to complete a degree but the adventure was irresistible, Ó she writes in her biography.

Before I could read, I would sneak
a la casa de mi abuela.
The gray stones nodded like a
heavy paintbrush over the hill,
quite a haul, but I liked color,

siesta — I hid in a back
room while visitors prodded her
hands for snips of death or love, she
was a cultural florist, you see,

cracking like a rook and bored, I
often traipsed out to the den and
balked, pooling my eyes at photos,
hints of me, ethnic auras on

the mantle, mysterious and
dead as Latin trimmed in white-paper
stasis, the frames were story-less,
and cryptic as library cards,

black eyes crawled out at me, swarming
ants, speaking in pairs, senoritas,
(I think), precise and wild, torrents
of darkness fell from their ears, the

men had short hair and leather coats,
capping out dignity like stamps,
no inscriptions, no definitions,
questions gusted in me as leaves,

resolute, a chimney, I
determined as I grew to puff
out the answers to visage,
un-packaged and sealed with steady

names, and jaws I recognized when
drawing my bath water, constant,
a retrospection of waves,
my mind, in limbo and ashless,

digging, unpadded as a knife,
my hands flew like dirt and years among
immigration offices and pictures,
sighing barns and recipes,

peppers filing in by german
cattle, islands, moccasins,
and pasta, cut-off, the ends
of my nails found jalapeño

in my stomach lying down there
like an old wood chip, I hear it
sticking to my ribs when I breathe,
somehow a bitter clang, a cold

steeple ness, hollow as a root
in winter, but spicy, so I
am left to choose my cloak
and guess at the heart of customs. Morena.

My comb holds it,
the sun dotes on it
like a mirror in June, and when
I marry I will have red flowers
in my hair to prove it.