god has big eyes &
he puts them in the mouths
of little children &
you can do what you will
with a child, but
one way or
another
what you will
will come back to speak
to you
when you are old
when your hands are
arthritic
when your knees
buckle
when your mind is
growing thin, (oh yes)
that tiny voice
will speak &
speak &
speak
The 2016 Luminaire Award for Best Poetry
FIFTH PLACE
We are pleased to announce this poem as the Fifth Place winner for The 2016 Luminaire Award for Best Poetry, honoring the independent press’ best poems of the year. The winners are selected by an external panel that judges all pieces blindly and selects the full list of 12 finalists from hundreds of entries. Alternating Current does not determine the final outcome for the judging; the external judges’ decisions are final.
With presently 550–600 pieces published between 1992 and 2015 (without the Internet), Normal remains “one of the last American primitives” [self-described] in the underground press. His most recent book, I See Hunger’s Children: Selected Poems 1962–2012, was published by Lummox Press in 2012.
