Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, First Place winner in Narrative’s Eight Annual Poetry Contest, is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Negative Money (Soft Skull, 2023); Travesty Generator, which received the 2020 Poetry Society of America Anna Rabinowitz Prize; and But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise, chosen by Claudia Rankine as the winner of the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Award. Betram earned a PhD in literature and creative writing from University of Utah and is an associate professor of English and director of the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland.

Photograph by Dennison Bertram.

Two Poems

by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Circles in the Sky

I want to want
to tell you
about dakota
where I

rev
the wolf


in my throat
zone
of avoidance


buffaloing
the sky above
People on couch
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