
RUNNER-UP: inheritance
ACROSS: 2. shorn hair /one less thing to hold
I love how formally ambitious this poem is. I love that it insists on its own mystery and possibility (for the answers are not really answers but whole realms of possibility). What the poet does include as text moved me deeply. I left with the desire to read more, to keep reading toward the feelings the poem nurtured inside me.
—Billy-Ray Belcourt

ACROSS
2. shorn hair /one less thing to hold
3. losing my stomach when hushed
8. i make the active choice that i am real
DOWN
1. azaleas bloom / i think of leaving
4. i mourn someone i fear, i fear someone i am becoming
5. where does disease end and i begin
6. i am not too ugly for this world
7. we live and we name things / i can't name this